Muffed opportunity

Dear reader,

the dvds haven't arrived this evening. Just to let you know...

Today one of our bosses told me she'd have a task for me. Before she could show me what I had to do, we needed  to wait for another colleague to give me some additional papers I'd need. As we waited my boss asked me if I on what terms I was with that colleague. Now, in english there's just "you" and that's for everyone, strangers as well as close friends and family. In german we have a formal "you" (Sie), usually used by kids to address adults or generally to talk to strangers or people you're not that close with.  There's another "you" (du) for friends and family or people you're more close to. So what she asked me was if I was on "du" terms with her with first names or not. I told her we were on "du" terms. I used that opportunity to ask my boss how we should keep it between each other and suggested that maybe we could make it "du" and first names. (I didn't tell her, but  I'm working there now for over a year and we both like each other.) She said she'd like to do that.

I thought about asking her for some time now, although I never really knew exactly how to ask her. In retrospect I thought the way I actually did it now was rather clumsy. But that's how I did it now anyway.

I didn't yet talk about Gaston, my bat "hand puppet"! I bought it in april since Lucy and Fritzchen, like I've told you before, aren't that good to work with for ventriloquism. More on Gaston in another post... In a flash of "comfort shopping" I had bought 4 books on ventriloquism: Edgar Bergen's "How To Become A Ventriloquist", which I forgot to mention in my blog post yesterday, Paul Winchell's book and 2 books by Ronn Lucas and Chris Clober, which I also forgot to include in yesterday's blog post. I'll tell you more about the books another time. Inspired by one of Ronn Lucas and Chris Clober's books, I got this idea that I could offer my boss the "du" through Gaston. My plan was this: My boss up until now always addressed me with "Miss Grabke", which would kind of be Gaston's "cue". He would have said, "She doesn't dare telling you directly that she would like to be called Sarah." At that moment I would have used my free hand to hold Gaston's mouth shut and say something like, "He's cheeky, but he's right. Do we want to change over to "du"?

My plan was to write to Ronn Lucas after that and proudly tell him about it. Especially more so, since the words I would have put in Gaston's mouth work nicely without moving lips. (Not so much my english translation for this blog here, but even that is not that difficult to say without moving your lips really.) In the book that inspired me to this situation, Ronn Lucas writes that he would like to see readers actually doing some of the situations he suggests. I surely couldn't have recorded it. But I wanted to be able to tell him about it in an e-mail. On tuesday already I have had the opportunity to suggest the "du" to her in a harmless situation, but very consciously didn't do it. Now I muffed the opportunity. Darn.

Until next blog,

sarah