Silence

When you ask a question of someone and all you get in response is silence, what do you assume? I have been thinking about this a lot lately. The obvious assumption would be that they just did not hear the question. But not everyone assumes that. The other options would be negative response, positive response or apathy. Now when I send a text to someone and they do not respond, I assume it is a no. Recently my manager held a conference call and every time she asked a question, there were only crickets. In that situation I would assume everyone was feeling apathetic. As I was thinking of this, I suddenly had to laugh when I remembered a completely different response to silence when I was a kid in church council meetings. The head elder used to say, "I will take your silence for consent."