about miscommunication

My little sister seems to have just outgrown her spastic childlike movements and sense of innocence - by replying to a parental question regarding the presence of alcohol at a new year's party with - I won't get drunk. In her lovely honesty she is telling mom that she is growing up. In mom's suitably shocked face she is mourning the child Em was and registering the beautiful, independant woman before her.

Do you find it funny that the most simplistic of sentances - I LOVE YOU - is translated into the most contorted and bizarre relations between people? We humans are equipped with such a shocking array of communication tools - our gangly arms, our eyebrows (when was the last time you understood something through an eyebrow movement? I know, an underused face structure!) our voices (pitch, melody, flow) our words, our silence and stillness. I watch mom's on the bus with their children - pointing out funny dogs or odd shaped trees as they speed by - and they are saying - I LOVE YOU. I see people arguing in the street - yelling and weeping - flinging their arms open, clenching their jaws and they are also saying - I LOVE YOU.

Isn't it funny how much of what we are meaning to say, what we want to say, gets lost in translation?