Silent Saturday

I have wanted to take a day and just not talk for quite some time now.  I have brought it up from time to time over the past year or so when talking to the wife and she has not warmed up to the idea (this is a kind understatement [insert “woman” and “talking” joke here]).  I have offered a few compromises to get her to come along with me on this experiment (ex: only I take the vow of silence).  In the end she only agreed to a partial day so this Saturday we are gong to give it a try.

The agreement is to stay silent (no verbal communication) until noon on Saturday.  This will work out to 5 or 6 hours depending on when McKinney decides it is time to get up.  The wife is actually leaving around 10:30 to head into her (extreme) part time job (8 hours per month) so if she is lucky she might only need to stay silent for 4 hours or so.  The kids will need to last until noon at home with dear old Dad.

The son (who gives the wife a run for her money in the talking department on any day of the week) is up for it but knows that he will not be able to make it.  He cannot even survive 5 minutes in the car without talking.  That number might realistically be closer to 2 minutes.  We were about a mile from home once and I bet him he could not stay silent.  10 seconds later he commented on the shape of a cloud.  I re-upped the bet for the final 30 seconds and he still forgot and spoke before we hit the driveway (he wanted me to bet him that he could not stay quiet for the length of the driveway after that).  For this Saturday I am giving him the incentive of paying a penalty of a nickel per word should he slip up.

The daughter has not weighed in yet but I imagine she will do better than the son.  She can disappear from us and retreat to her room for hours on end so she might fare better than the wife or the son.  We will have to wait and see.

I am very excited about this and if it works out I might make it a regular thing (maybe every first Saturday of the month) or expand it to a larger portion of the day.  I like silence.  Early in our marriage the wife came home to me sitting in the dark on the couch with the radio and TV turned off.  She thought there was something wrong with me (or that I was upset) but I assured her that I was just enjoying the quiet.  Soon afterward we got a dog and then had kids and (come to think of it) I have not had any silence since.  Saturday cannot get here soon enough.  I will have to let you know how it works out.

Jon