Silencio

A Study in Textual Silence:

Silence is a general lack of noise. This leaves for a bit of personal interpretation: To some, silence is walking through life without talking or being talked to by anybody. Noise exists in the world around them, but does not affect that individual on a personal level. For others, silence is the cessation of sound altogether, which is difficult to come by these days. Think middle of the Sahara dessert. However, for our purposes, silence can be considered a period of speechlessness.

Silence can be demanded, such as during standardized testing. (ACT/SAT) Breaking such a silence results in, of course, getting brutally beaten by your classmates after the fact, among other more academic consequences farther down the line. Such a silence can be considered a "healthy" one, because any length of time not spent in immense physical pain is a glorious time indeed.

Then there are the more poorly timed silences, or "awkward turtles." These curious creatures seem to show up at the worst times, such as at the dinner table.. But not your dinner table. Like your boy or girlfriend's parent's dinner table. The awkward turtle will then proceed to slowly make a hole in the atmosphere of a delightful homemade meal. NOBODY wants to eat chicken piccata after a turtle has swam through the sauce you had been working on all evening. If the inarticulate abomination is allowed to roam freely throughout the courses, it will no doubt affect the overall quality of the night, and bring up awkward questions like, "So.. when you take off your shoes, do you untie them or just leave them as is?" or "Hey.. where'd that turtle come from?" This is the bad kind of silence.

Finally, we have the normal silence which is a part of most people's everyday lives. Said silence (not of the reptilian variety) shows up at natural break points of a conversation, and is not awkward unless one or both of the parties make it awkward. Worse than making it awkward is when someone just talks to hear the sound of their own voice. Conversations in this style consist mainly of the word, "Like," and tend to be extremely shallow. Talking like that like, makes the, like, world, like. you know, like, the society around, like, us, like, me and like, you, maybe like, Mr. Smith too, like, chicken-waffles, and like, that's what she like said! The sound of my voice is like, offensive in itself! Don't be this person; let silence be. Healthy silence keeps our listening skills keen. Without constant noise filling our heads, it's much easier to listen when someone is actually talking.

I put way too much time into these entries when I don't have the time to give... TT_TT But it definitely is fun to type this stuff up!