You’re so fucking special

What I like about the inter­net. This could be the start of an occa­sional series. Pause. What I like about the inter­net is that, occa­sion­ally, I’m think­ing about some­thing — mostly an abstract and not entirely tan­gible idea, which I can’t clearly put into words — and I click on a link some­where and — and — and — sud­denly the answer is there right in front of me. I’m able to stop con­sid­er­ing how I might put my thoughts into words, because I can just say, “Hey, click on this.” Then I leave them to it, and hope that they get the message.

Last night, I was attempt­ing to write a let­ter. I say “attempt­ing” because, with emails and the inter­net so pre­val­ent in my life, I don’t write enough of them any more. (I’ve dis­cussed this in greater detail here, if you’re inter­ested). In this let­ter, apart from a bit of gos­sip and an update on what’s hap­pen­ing in my life, I am also try­ing to subtly com­mu­nic­ate to the per­son I am writ­ing to that they are very spe­cial to me. Not in any romantic sense, I hasten to add — just in a genu­ine, you-are-very-important-to-me kind of way. Yes, it’s prob­ably stu­pid emo­tional gub­bins, but we’re allowed a bit of that every now and then, aren’t we?

As you’re prob­ably gath­er­ing from the way I’m phras­ing this, try­ing to say such a thing invari­ably opens up a huge mine­field of clumsy or inap­pro­pri­ate word­ing. And I’ve suc­ceeded in step­ping on all the mine­fields in my size 11 boots. From exper­i­ence, I’ve found that when I try and tell someone they’re a very spe­cial or very import­ant per­son to me, either I entirely fail to find the cor­rect words or I end up sound­ing like a com­pletely sen­ti­mental mushy fool. Even more unfor­tu­nately, it’s usu­ally the lat­ter of the two out­comes that wins out, as many people who know me will con­firm all too read­ily (I can give you their email addresses, should you wish to con­tact them and obtain writ­ten proof).

This morn­ing, I retrieved the unfin­ished let­ter from the rub­bish bin and tried to con­tinue writ­ing it. (In truth, I simply pulled the let­ter off the top of the moun­tain of paper at the corner of my desk, which I euphemist­ic­ally refer to as a “fil­ing tray.” Sadly, I was lying for dra­matic effect when I referred to the rub­bish bin, in the hope that you would start ima­gin­ing a highly melo­dra­matic scene in which I screwed up the let­ter, threw it away in exas­per­a­tion, and then burst into tears or smashed a piece of crock­ery. Some­thing like that, any­way). How­ever, after one pathetic minute of con­cen­trated atten­tion, I gave up and went to find some dis­trac­tion on the interwebnet.

I ended up at Evhead — not a reg­u­lar read, I have to admit — and fol­lowed a link to spe­cial­ness the movie. That’s when the mists sud­denly cleared. The way to tell someone they’re spe­cial is to do it in a funny voice, and to con­cen­trate on the incon­sequen­tial little things, rather than any sort of grand emo­tional statement:

“You. Are. Spe­cial. Do you know how spe­cial you are? There is only one of you. You eat dolphin-safe tuna fish sand­wiches. You are a spe­cial indi­vidual. Be spe­cial to your­self, and enjoy this spe­cial­ness for spe­cial people like you.”

The fact that this strange little anim­a­tion is dir­ec­ted by someone named Alex Pleas­ant only adds to the effect.

But that’s not all. As I listened to the narrator’s voice — which sounds a bit like Pro­fessor Stephen Hawk­ing on helium — and looked at the endear­ingly crude car­toons, I remembered another clas­sic way to tell someone they’re spe­cial — do it in a some­what exas­per­ated way. This is best demon­strated in a speech given by Wal­ter Matthau’s char­ac­ter, Oscar, in the clas­sic movie The Odd Couple:

“You’re not noth­ing, you’re some­thing! You’re a per­son! You’re flesh, and blood, and bones, and hair, and nails, and ears! You’re not a fish. You’re not a buf­falo. You’re you! You walk, and talk, and cry, and com­plain, and eat little green pills, and send sui­cide tele­grams. No one else does that, Felix, no one!”

Since I don’t think there’s any­thing wrong with quot­ing dir­ectly from films, I would respect­fully sug­gest that you just write that on a card, repla­cing the ref­er­ence to Felix with “insert name here”, and use it on the next occa­sion you feel like telling someone how spe­cial they are.

All these ideas — and I’m sure there are many more of them out there — are just excuses and avoid­ance tech­niques, of course. Surely there’s noth­ing wrong in just say­ing what we feel? Is there? We have all these words at our dis­posal, after all. It can’t be that dif­fi­cult. Over to you. Tell me, if you like.