3 ms·

The bull is, from the viewpoint of the kid in the accident, I think the most ingenious part. "I'm okay, the car is not" communicates the most-relevant informat

The bull is, from the viewpoint of the kid in the accident, I think the most ingenious part. "I'm okay, the car is not" communicates the most-relevant information, sure but at that point, Dad can start immediately getting upset about the car. "I'm okay, the bull is not" presents Dad with a mystery, delays the onset of anger, and likely lowers the peak of anger, as the fun of unravelling an interesting and unique mystery probably takes up some of that mental energy. In an office setting, yeah, you ideally have enough trust and safety to be able to disclose bad news without needing to worry about upsetting people (though frequently not, honestly). Families are... different. Even in "perfect" families, and especially for a situation like this, there's no "blameless postmortems", no "five whys", etc. Kid crashed the car. Kid should not have crashed the car. There's a direct line of responsibility. So being able to deflect a bit of that anger and upset is, frankly, ingenious.

gardenhedge 3y ago
Confusing two people in the middle of the night with a short sentence is considered genius? From what I can see, the situation was communicated very poorly.
ilyt 3y ago
> "I'm okay, the bull is not" presents Dad with a mystery, delays the onset of anger, and likely lowers the peak of anger, as the fun of unravelling an interesting and unique mystery probably takes up some of that mental energy. No, it sounds annoying and tiring to deal with that kind of riddle-speech. If your parent has anger issues it would just result in something like "what fucking bull, what the fuck did you do?", not some riddle mystery game you think...
vGPU 3y ago
Indeed. Presenting the bull immediately creates a visual mythos w/ assumptions of some Herculean efforts. “Dad, I wrecked the car” is much more likely to be answered [non-verbally] with regrets about not paying for contraception.

gardenhedge 3y ago

Confusing two people in the middle of the night with a short sentence is considered genius? From what I can see, the situation was communicated very poorly.

ilyt 3y ago

> "I'm okay, the bull is not" presents Dad with a mystery, delays the onset of anger, and likely lowers the peak of anger, as the fun of unravelling an interesting and unique mystery probably takes up some of that mental energy. No, it sounds annoying and tiring to deal with that kind of riddle-speech. If your parent has anger issues it would just result in something like "what fucking bull, what the fuck did you do?", not some riddle mystery game you think...

vGPU 3y ago

Indeed. Presenting the bull immediately creates a visual mythos w/ assumptions of some Herculean efforts. “Dad, I wrecked the car” is much more likely to be answered [non-verbally] with regrets about not paying for contraception.