First of all, I think I am a little tired of my first sentence (see above). I mean, with a few exceptions I have started all 400+ blogs with this greeting but it is a pain to have to ensure that I have the text word word for word so this will be the last time I worry about it (in my own anal-retentive way). You might see it at the beginning still, I just won’t be worrying about it as much and I know that you care about such things.
The wife and son went on a school field trip on Friday to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY. She had planned on driving (due to our distrust of the safety of 15 passenger vans) but there was another mother (who shared our thoughts about those vans) and so they hitched a ride with them. These two ladies (the wife and the driver) did not know each other well but 5 hours or so in a van together gives a couple time to get to know each other (as a side note, our first date involved a drive to Ft Wayne and back giving us 3 hours to know each other). As a result, they are now (in some weird fashion that the male brain cannot quite grasp) great friends. One bad thing about the wife having someone to talk to for such a great length of time is that she feels the need to share highlights of the conversation with me (and by highlights I mean to replay the entire conversation). Over the 13 years of our marriage (our 13th anniversary is tomorrow), I have tried various techniques to avoid hearing these kind of details…
- Pay close attention (in case there is a quiz): I admit that I only tried this during the first few months of our marriage when all males give it their best to be the man they pretended to be before they said, “Yes” to the marriage proposal. This grew old quickly as any married man can testify to.
- Pay close attention, but only for the highlights (since I learned there never was a quiz): This gives me the highlights in case (for brownie points) I needed to recall a piece of information about a particular friend of hers in case we should ever meet.
- Nod but pay no attention: Once I realized that there were no quizzes and that brownie points weren’t all that they were cracked up to be, I decided that the basic reason for her telling me this information was not that I would be more informed but that she had some basic need to decompress after a long conversation. I thought that maybe (again, here we are talking about a male trying to figure out what a female needs or is intending) she just needed to get it out of her system. This technique worked pretty well but you still need to fake interest by repeating an occasional phrase to ask a question whose nature would indicate that you were paying attention.
- Fake a distraction: I will often claim that I have a need to leave the room (to go to the bathroom to take care of an errand that I forgot until just now, etc) and then return to the room (sometimes 30 minutes later) only to have her click some magic “un-pause” button that allows here to pick up right where she left off. This ability is incredible to me. I lose my train of thought in the middle of a conversation and she can pick up a conversation that has been on hiatus for 30 minutes.
- Look for a way to stop the conversation: I have tried this this lately (hey, I hit 10 years of marriage a few years back). I even have gotten so bold to ask if there was any particular words or phrase (including swearing) that I could say that would stop the conversation. When that was only met with “a look” I become bolder and asked what physical action I could take (get in the car and drive away, walk out of the room while slamming a door, etc) and this was met with “another look” that made the first look look quite tame in comparison.
- Threw up my hands in numb despair and go back to earlier techniques: On the eve of my 13th anniversary, I am now back (almost) to where I have started.
Thanks for reading my random thoughts.
Jon
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