A Study in Communication

Eventually you have to tell someone. You can research online until you form little calluses on your mouse finger, but eventually you’re going to have to spit it out.

“We’re moving overseas.”

We told some people at the dog park first. We were beta testing our delivery.

“Yeah, so we’re, you know, moving, to like, Spain” I like to clear my throat after a beauty like that.

But it worked! They didn’t throw stones at us, call us hippies or try to sic their dogs on us. It was going very well. They said, “great”. We were encouraged.

Next we tried it out on our neighbors. I stammered something out about Spain and traveling. They had all these “questions”. I’m not very good at making people understand why we would want to drop everything and move abroad, at least not to people who don’t immediately see why. I think it’s possible I might have muttered something about working remotely, and made some forced metaphor between travel and sandwiches.

I feigned a call on my cell phone and we hastily made our retreat. We needed to regroup, to strategize.

Back home, I drew on the white board, and my husband made pivot tables in excel. There might have been a 5 point action plan, but only if you think that’s awesome and not the most ridiculous thing ever.

We were ready for the big show: the parents.

The day came, and we sat on the couch facing each other. One would call and the other would make encouraging faces and try to mouth helpful words. It was a system for communicating important news, that we had mastered over eight years of jointly disappointing our parents.

I went first. At the end, my mother said simply, “Oh. Okay.” My husband’s parent’s seconded that opinion. We were stunned. Was it really going to be this easy?

So we started telling everyone. Our friends, the guy at Mike’s Convenience store, the mail man, the lady that never makes eye contact when we pass her on the street—everyone. Well, except my work. They don’t seem to like that kind of news up front. I think the official corporate policy is: “Lie to us. Trust us, it’s easier for everyone”.

But eventually even that secret had to be told. And within 2 seconds of the email announcement being sent to everyone in my department, I had 5 instant message boxes pop up. “Spain???? OMG RU4REAL?“ (Ok my coworkers don’t actually IM like that).

By now, we’ve gotten really good at our “We’re moving to Spain” dog and pony show. We’ve got the beats down: my husband pauses for my part, I set him up for his joke, and boom they don’t know what hit them. We like to educate and entertain. It’s called edutainment, folks.

This won’t last long. In a few short weeks we’ll be taking the show on the road, this time in Spanish. When they ask, “¿Por qué España?” I’m going to need something better than “No entiendo”. Maybe it’s time to start practicing our miming skills.

(Yes, that sound you heard was my husband banging his head on a large Spanish-English dictionary. We’re working on that.)