Due to the bad weather, I worked from home most of this week. Also due to the bad weather, the kid’s school was cancelled (3) days this week and the wife did not even bother trying to get to work on Wednesday (she has Monday and Tuesday off usually). As such, we experienced a mild case of Cabin Fever. I was not as bored as the other family members as I indeed did have work to do. The fever was more intense when I was on a conference call.
I have a nice Plantronics CT12 cordless phone (or is it wireless, perhaps cords are too far in the past for the word “cordless” to have any real meaning) so I can have my hands free to multitask. This week I have been hosting many training sessions where I share my desktop so the phone is a very nice thing to have. Over the summer though, the original headset became less and less reliable as it would cut in and out. I priced a factory replacement and it was something like $70 (half the cost of the original unit). Fortunately for me, the earpiece from my old cell phone worked like a charm. Well, kind of anyway.
Since it is an earpiece for a cell phone, the built in microphone works more like a boom mike, picking up all kinds of ambient noise (like say, kids home from school playing in the next room). This is OK for the days I am here alone with only the dogs to keep me company but not so OK when there are more living and breathing (and noisemaking) bodies around (like this week). We have a “daddy’s on the phone” mode that everyone has to observe. Strict silence, no talking, no movies (unless headphones are used), etc. As such, they have to resort to whispers and hand gestures.
Now my wife is a long time user of hand gestures. She uses them to enhance her normal talking. As she tells a story or describes something, she will often add a hand gesture out of habit. We have an ongoing argument about her (what I think of as) excessive use of this communication aide but more about that later.
During one meeting this week, the wife was trying to communicate to me. She initially gave me a small kiss (a daring move when that sound could be heard on the call) and then was trying to tell me something with her hand movements. She was making some sort of movement with her hand near her mouth and it looked like she was saying the word “teeth”. I interpreted this to mean, “I just kissed you and, um, was, um, wondering if you had brushed your teeth yet today?” The sign she was making looked sort of like a teeth brushing motion so I indicated that, yes, I had indeed brushed my teeth. Several minutes later she delivered a hot cup of tea to me and only then did I realize that her motion was of someone sipping tea from a cup and the word she was mouthing was “tea” and not “teeth”. This misunderstanding actually enforced my side of the argument that I mentioned in the last paragraph.
The wife has a habit of talking with her hands. She uses this genuflecting mostly when it is not needed. For instance, she would say “I was writing a check” and then also use one hand flatly opened as the checkbook and her other hand as the pen and make a motion like she was signing her name onto a check. My point is this: if you don’t know what “writing a check” means then there is no way this hand gesture will put you over the top and get to to understand any better. A similar situation occurs when she talks about driving a car and puts her hands at the 10 & 2 position of an imaginary steering wheel. Again, if you do not know what driving a car is, then no amount of extra help with pantomime will assist you. I see it as it is almost as if she feels that I am not intelligent enough to know what writing a check or driving a car means and she feels I need this extra help. I find it a little demeaning. As I point this out to her, it is usually met with “the look” (all you husbands know what I mean).
There are other times that the hand gesture is both not needed and actually causes confusion. A good example would be when she was describing a friend of hers from high school. You see, my wife was in the marching band and played the French horn. Her friend also played this instrument. She was trying to explain to me that you needed to have big lungs in order to play some of the larger brass instruments. As she said the phrase “big lungs” she made a gesture with both her hands to show that her friend’s lungs (did I mention her friend was a girl) were able to meet the need. I am not sure I can paint the picture with words here but any half wired male who saw this hand gesture this would NOT think big LUNGS but big…well big…other things. I pointed this out (and got “the look” again) and she did (eventually) agree that her motions could be misinterpreted. This has not stopped her though from this habit.
Jon
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