Close Enough

How I Politely Hallucinate My Way Through Social Situations

My mum went to visit her friend in hospice.

This sentence should go in a very specific emotional direction.
Soft voice. Concern. Maybe a scarf.

Instead, it went sideways.

She arrived, found the right ward, walked into a room, saw a woman in a bed, and did what any polite, well-raised person does in a slightly awkward situation.

She started chatting.

They talked.
And talked.
And really got into it.

At some point, they were deep in conversation. Life, health, somebody’s neighbour, zucchini overharvest, the usual. Jane from HR is in trouble again. Jack and his back, tragic. Your daughter, my daughter, well, at least they’re trying.

My mum can build a full relationship in under twelve minutes.

She did briefly think, Gosh, she’s changed. But then again, people do change. And in a hospice, everyone sort of becomes… hospice-shaped. Same blankets, same lighting, same quiet voices. You stop asking questions.

Then she got up, said a warm, heartfelt goodbye, and left behind a box of very soft sweets, in line with the unspoken hospice rule that nobody needs dry biscuits when life is already doing that.

Only to realise, in the corridor, that her actual friend
was in the next room.

There is a specific human condition here.

You walk into a situation.
You are not entirely sure what is going on.
But instead of checking, clarifying, or asking one simple question like a rational adult, you commit.

You double down on the wrong reality and behave inside it as if it’s correct.

You don’t verify.
You perform certainty.

I call this the Harold-Mick syndrome.

You know the one. You meet someone, mishear their name, and just continue. You build an entire relationship on it. Years go by. His name is Mick. You call him Harold. You introduce him as Harold. Other people start calling him Harold.

At some point, you are too deep in it to fix anything, so you simply stay the course.

The best part?

My mum was not embarrassed.

She simply recalibrated.

“Oh,” she said. “Here you are.”

And then went to visit the correct friend.

Sans the sweets.
Sorry about that.
Good thing this one was unconscious.

I am slightly hard of hearing, and it’s getting worse, but slowly, and for that, I thank Hekate.

So I often find myself smiling and nodding, saying “yeah, sure” with confidence, hoping I’ve landed in roughly the right conversation.

I like to think I compensate with intelligence. I analyse the setting, the people, the tone. I run a quick internal assessment through garbled noise.

I give myself a solid ninety per cent success rate.

According to me.

And honestly, this might be the most emotionally stable way to move through life.

Because the alternative is to constantly stop everything and say:

“Sorry, could you repeat that?”
“Is this the right room?”
“Are you Mick or Harold?”
“Swimming in the Ganges? Wasn’t me. Oh, singing with no panties? If you say so.”

And none of us has the energy for that.

So we improvise.

We sit.
We talk.
We connect with the wrong people in the right way.

And sometimes, completely by accident,
we still manage to be kind.