Reflection

Randomname

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That’s the laziest title ever..

Today I’ll be sharing about an experience I had many moons ago. It is the perfect example of a communication fail. In this article I shared about how to communicate effectively and gave a few tips and tricks. I naiively thought that since I published this post, the world would magically change. After talking to a loved one about a random stranger leaving a meaningless message that she didn’t know how to respond to, I decided to write the story again. This time I hope the world will change.

Johnny Bravo

I really loved this character because he said he truly believed that he was handsome and in one episode he actually got away with a pretty girl. I remember giving this cartoon a try and falling in love with it so much that I can safely say that I’ve watched every Johnny Bravo episode that was made. I started to think like him and would look at myself in the mirror just like he did and would say “Hey there handsome!” I then imagined girls going crazy and screaming my name “oooh maputi….”

Donkey Years Later Donkey Years Later

I finally got an android phone. I remember that I was so excited and was grateful for being bought such a wonderful device. It had this magical application called Whatsapp and I couldn’t wait to use it. I got myself some bundles and installed WhatsApp and got ready to start talking to people. I quickly realized that messages don’t come as quickly as you would want them to and you’re often left with periods of complete silence when all contacts are offline. I’m someone who really loves daydreaming and I remember thinking about Johnny Bravo and imagining that I would get hundreds of girls inboxing me (hey I was a kid. Kids are allowed to have a wild imagination), One day, I remember seeing a message from an unknown person and jumping from the chair. It was a message from somebody I knew who I never really talked to in person. It was obviously a girl. I remember screaming in celebration. My parents probably thought I was having one of my crazy moments.

As I mentioned earlier, I love daydreaming. I fantasized being a really popular person – like a spy. Spy Maputi. Driving down the road with girls screaming and throwing their boyfriends away once they got sight of me. I felt like I had made it in life. After finally calming down I went back and responded. She had said “Hi.” I responded with a “Hey.” You know, I couldn’t make the message long otherwise she’d end up thinking that I’m desperate for the conversation. “Handsome super Maputi spies” have to keep the girl on edge I told myself. After 4 hours of waiting I got a response. It was a “Hey.” I didn’t know what to type next so I got into a meeting with myself (yes I talk to myself). We came up with a strategy. We saw that this was a very complicated situation and it needed a very delicate approach. We spent a good hour daydreaming and coming up with an appropriate strategy. After this hour of deliberation, we finally came to a conclusion. I had to reply the message with a short and super cool response. That response was a “Wassup”

We ended up having conversations like these:

Randomgirl 09:52 : Hie

Iamfamous 09:55: Hallo (note that I answered exactly 3 mins later because a random site on the internet said you need to respond to messages after exactly 3 mins in order for you to look cool)

Randomgirl 10:56: Hey

Iamfamous 10:59: Wassup

Randomgirl 17:56: Hwu

Iamfamous 17:59: Cool

End of conversation for the day.

We went for about a month having such ridiculous conversations until I eventually realized that this was rubbish. I just deleted the number and stopped responding. So I learnt many lessons from this encounter.

#1. If a random person sends you a message try to ask them what they want in a polite way. If you don’t, you’ll end up playing what I like to call the randomgirl game (even if it’s a guy). You will have several senseless messages in which you ask the person for the name, then they give you the first name only (like you remember it LOL), then you pretend to know the person but since you’re curious to know more but are too embarrassed to ask for the full name, you keep on having pointless conversations about the weather, current affairs, the effects of having a hole in the ozone layer and about clouds that look like cows. After wasting so much time, the person then says I wanted to ask for a friend’s number but I already got it. You then ask yourself “Did a just waste a day of my life?” (the answer is YES).

#2. I got to realize that I’m not a super famous maputi spy.

#3. I realized that curiosity can make you do silly things. Each time I inbox a stranger (for things varying from asking for website help to asking for assistance for random and sometimes weird requests), I get responded to in seconds. If I were a girl, I’d say I look pretty. But I’m not. And I don’t even use my face – it’s usually a picture of a cow, a stone, or something along those lines. It is because people are super curious to find out what you’re all about. It was that curiosity that made me have pointless conversations for a month (okay there was a bit of foolishness involved because I should have probably realized this in less than a month).

So that’s it for today. See you when the next post comes out (I could say see you next week Wednesday, but what if I get whisked away to another planet and fail to post?).

And follow me on twitter @ maputiatota

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