Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We (or at least I) need a word for those little things that give us (me) headaches.

The waiter at the restaurant walked by. He had a band-aid on his thumb. “Yeah,” he acknowledged. “I just cut or burned for scraped or something my thumb and put a band-aid on it.”

The small injury was easy to explain. The band-aid was an obvious, visible display of the injury. We all understand it.

I went to a meeting at work (name just about any day in the workplace where we have meetings). Someone said something or showed something or did something that gave me a terrible headache.

I didn’t put a visible band-aid on my forehead to show everyone that what they did hurt my head. No one understood that some action gave me a headache.

And I can’t find a verb like “cut” or “scraped” or “burned” to express what happened. Hence, the title of the post. Why is it that a little cut on the thumb is seen and understood, but a major event that brings a headache and angst goes unnoticed and all that?

Here’s a tip: at the end of each meeting, the person presiding stops and asks, “Did anyone get a headache in this meeting? Did any of us give anyone else a headache? Did anyone just ___-ed their brain? If yes, let’s pause and discuss that.”

The ensuing discussion will probably be far more important than anything else discussed previously.