There’s a little green car parked outside my office window. It’s clean on the outside, though the inside is packed to the roof with stuff. There’s a woman resting against the hood, engaged in spirited conversation with what I will guess is an invisible but thoroughly attentive audience. She’s been talking for at least an hour, and for any of you looking to up your self-righteousness quotient by playing Devil’s advocate I will add that, no, she is not talking on the phone through a headset. I pass this woman several times a week, and she is always talking to herself. Or, as I mentioned before, an invisible audience.

The reason I believe she has an audience is primarily because of her expansive hand gestures. These are not crazy, wild arm-swings, rather they’re controlled, as if accompanying a series of important points or giving directions. She’s neatly dressed, and wearing earrings. Her hair’s in a neat ponytail, and she has burgundy-colored reading glasses perched atop her head.

Now, she has spread out a paper towel on the roof of her car, wetted it with some water from a bottle, and wiped her face and neck with it, reaching down into the neckline of her sweater. Now, she’s applying moisturizer. I assume it’s moisturizer. I’m making a lot of assumptions about this woman I don’t know, and have only passed on the street or observed from my window.

I am more aware of the role assumptions play in my life, thanks to the great, great voluntary (mandatory) training I attended last week on the subject of good judgment. I’d been postponing taking the class because it seemed to promise hours of pointless boringness. Thanks to my training, I realize now that I made an ASSUMPTION, and that when I make an ASSUMPTION, I make an ASS out of U and MPTION.

This class, which is split into two sessions of four hours each, taught me many valuable facts, which I will now share with you (you’re welcome—see, I’m ASSUMING that you will thank me, hence making an ASS out of U and MING). For instance:

EXAMPLES OF BAD JUDGMENT

• Fatally shooting yourself in the face by accident, during a bank robbery. While it wasn’t explicitly stated, I guess (ASSUME) that the reason this is considered poor judgment is that you then can’t enjoy the fruits of your labor, i.e., the money.


• That hair-do you had in high school. Like, if you had a mullet, what were you thinking??? (That was the instructor’s example. I think that mullets should be lovingly cultivated and displayed for all the world to see.)


• Interrupting, especially interrupting the instructor.


• Making decisions without enough information, like for example, if someone refers to a person named Chris who is a performer in a drag show, you should not assume that person is male or gay or a transvestite, because Chris could be, like, a total straight woman playing “Passerby No. 3” in an otherwise drag production of “Streetcar Named Desire,” and you would have shown your prejudices by thinking anything else, you homophobe breeder.


• Thinking that one of the men in the class might not, during the “personal introduction” segment of the class, choose to reveal that many years ago, he proposed marriage to the woman sitting next to him, and that she turned him down.

It was such a great class. I say that (ASSUMING you will not know why) because at one point, the instructor announced that my name comes up frequently in her “Be A Customer Service Star!” class. That made me very happy. Although, thinking about it, I realize that I ASSUMED that my name comes up as a shining example of stellar customer service, and not as, say, a chronic troublemaker/ingrate. I will have to ask for clarification when I attend the second half of this class.

Assuming I attend.