Complications

My family as an amazing ability to complicate things, but when you think of it so do a lot of people. Very few people keep things simple. They over think every aspect of everything and it never actually helps.


One question that I find absolutely hilarious when parents try to give an answer to is, "What's gay mean?" This specific question gets incredibly over complicated. You could go with the typical denial approach and tell them that it means happy, but it's not always effective. I say the best answer is a simple, "Some boys fall in love with other boys and some girls fall in love with other girls. They are called gay." People however complicate it beyond all belief. They automatically assume that sex will get thrown into it. When it really won't. If you use the same explaination of love as you would for a heterosexual couple you won't have much of an issue.

Another way people complicate things is by over planning. If they go into too much detail of how things should work they are innevitably disipointed and pissed off. If you have a basic plan, "We'll meet here at this time and do this," you usually don't have an issue. It's when they start saying stuff like, '"We'll meet here at this time, then we'll do this, and we'll be done by this time, and be home by this time, etc." Once they start they can't stop and it ends up looking like christmas lights when you pull them out of the box each year. People in general expect things to go according to plan, so the more you have planned in a short amount of time, the less likely it is that you are going to actually follow the plan.

One of the most deadly forms of complicating things is when it comes to comedy. When you tell a joke, it's never actually funny when someone has to explain it. You have to let a persons mind make their own conclusions. i.e. Last year for my drama class we had to write skits. I wrote one mocking 300 (which isn 't all that hard to do). It was really simple when I turned it in. People found it funny. When it came time to perform it the actor that played the Spartan kept talking after the punchline. The joke was lost in his attempt to make it funnier.

It's actually amazing how often people complicate things. The solutions to problem are almost always right in front of our face, yet amazingly we can never figure them out. People seem to think that when something is simple it can't be right. That would be because we complicate everything.

The Skit Previously Mentioned
MESSENGER: I have a message for the king of Sparta!
"SPARTAN": (yelling angrily) THIS IS (suddenly speaking politely) not Sparta. You're in the wrong place.