"She Is Rather Cute For An Emoticon"

My good humor has been completely restored by an online chat session with my friend Steve (and to whom I must credit the quote that makes the title of this post).

We chat using Yahoo! Messenger as a rule, and I've noticed that sometimes my Macintosh version will not do the same things emoticon-wise, etc., as the Windows version that Steve uses. This can cause some confusion during conversations, as the following story will attest. (Actually, the following story is more about mistaken emoticon identity, but for the record, he WOULD type some things that would show up on my screen as nothing but words in parenthesis, and that was a little weird. But that isn't what this story is actually about. Come to think of it, if you want to read a story with a point, please just stop now. You will be sadly disappointed otherwise.)

It all started when I sent him a picture of myself and my new hair. I had told him I'd dyed it red with blond streaks, and he was having trouble imagining it, so I sent him the pic while we were chatting, and as he was waiting for it to come through, he sent me an emoticon of what looked on my side like a little clown face.

Steve is something of a joker (and saying that is like saying that water is something of a wet, permeable substance), so I thought he was just teasing me about my having red hair by calling me a clown, and I didn't say anything in response.

He asked me later on during the conversation, "What do you see when I type this?" and again the little clown popped up.

"A clown," I said.

"Oh nooooooo!"

"Why?"

"On mine it's just a girl with red hair."

I began to laugh, especially when Steve typed remorsefully, "You must have thought I was a jerk!" I hadn't thought so, but I DID think he was being a dork, because he did the clown-face more than once, and I was like, ok ok, just wait til you get the picture before you start assuming how I look with red hair!!! Everyone ELSE thinks it's pretty cool, so give it a chance!

Steve's remorse actually came from his impression that, when he did the clown-face (fine, red-haired girl), I was seeing just the word "clown." So he thought that I thought he was flat-out calling me a clown! Which I did, of course, because I saw a picture of what I thought was a clown (come on, it had a GIANT red nose, and two little tufts of red hair on the either side of its otherwise bald head, what would YOU think?). My amusement at his remorse came from the fact that I thought the emoticon on my screen was actually different than the emoticon on his, which in fact it was not. We were both very confused (as you probably are now) and very hysterical until we figured it out, and then we continued to be hysterical for awhile longer because it was still funny that we could both look at the exact same thing and see something completely different.

At least in my case, I didn't have to worry about anyone in the next cubicle wondering why work was apparently so amusing all of a sudden.

Well, I missed my chance to sit in the sun; now I have to get ready for work, but it was worth it. I got my good laugh for the day! Thanks, Stevie.