Pragmatics Disregarded

Lauren Schellenberg

I spent the last few days in Toronto with my brother. Walking down Queen street to meet him at a restaurant, I was approached by two young adults with clipboards. I say approached, but really, they converged on me. I felt the familiar wince of anxiety that precedes human interaction and tried to scoot around them, but the young woman was already speaking to me. I removed an earbud.  

She asked what I had been listening to. Music, I replied. She asked me what music. I asked her if she needed something.

She introduced herself and her partner as representatives for Doctors Without Borders, then asked if I had heard that malnutrition was a leading cause of death in the third world. I said no, I hadn’t.

She asked me what my name was. I said Jane.

 She asked me what I was doing with my time on Earth, and I said I was late for a meeting. I had to go. I’d look them up online. What were they called again? Doctors Without Boundaries?

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