Harnessing the healing power of snark
Image courtesy of Free Photo.
His sense of humor, as evidenced by the following conversation we had when discussing what to plant in our front yard.
Me: “I like things like sunflowers and daisies. I want to plant happy flowers, flowers that welcome you to our home.”
My husband: “OK that’s fine, but I really don’t think that there are any flowers that actually tell people to go f*#@ off.”
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
The other day I walked into our bathroom to find what I thought was my towel carelessly flung on the floor, while my husband’s towel was hanging neatly on its hook.
Me: “Why is my towel on the floor?”
My husband: “That’s not your towel, it’s my towel.”
Me: “Oh. Then why did you throw your towel on the floor and take my towel?”
My husband: “I didn’t take your towel-I upgraded it.”
…you ask your husband if you can drive to his office and switch cars with him at lunch. He says yes, and then stops getting ready for work in order to draw you a diagram of his office parking lot and circle the exact space in which he wishes the car to be parked. You respond by laughing in amusement, and then actually doing what he asks. But only, you inform him, because it will give you something to blog about later.
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
…gives me a headache.
Usually I am pretty good at getting in the last word. Words are what I was trained in, and now words are my business. But yesterday I met my match.
I was working with a tutoring client and trying to elicit some information from him in a process which, incidentally, has given me entirely new insights into the phrase, “squeezing blood from a stone.”
I asked him if he was this difficult in all of his conversations with others, and he said that he liked to present people with a challenge.
Me: “Well, that’s just like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I love a good challenge.”
Him: “Yes, but then it’s just like in the cartoons when I pull the flag away, and there’s an anvil there instead.”
He won.
Sometimes I think it would be nice if all personal interactions were as easily understood as those between me and my cats.
When they are happy they rub their head against my leg. When they are put out or indignant they poo in the tub. When they want attention they insert themselves in between me and whatever else I’m doing, and stick their furry little hiney right in my face to make sure that I inhale the maximum amount of fur possible and am unable to focus on anything but them. When they’re really angry they come and sit on my desk while I’m working, but facing away from me with their tail switching back and forth angrily, while aiming a malevolent glare in my direction. (Well, as malevolent as a 6 pound ball of grey fluff can be).
But when humans get involved, communication gets a lot more complicated.
I was thinking about that earlier this week as I was having lunch with my husband. He was upset about a news story he’d recently heard. It involved a “hot button” issue, the kind that causes all connections to the rational, logical part of your brain to shut down and instead leads you directly into highly charged, emotional (over)reacting. Which then leads to conversations where the people around you, who are not directly involved in your conversation, could accidentally overhear certain words or phrases and give you concerned looks as they begin to edge cautiously toward the door.
About six years ago I found myself in a similar situation, but due to the extremely different emotional climate in which we were all living back then, this time it was really funny rather than a cause for concern. But it won’t seem so at first, so just bear with me.
Six years ago this summer my family gathered to say goodbye to my grandmother, who was dying of cancer. Her wish was that when she died, she simply be wrapped in a white sheet before she was placed in her coffin. This was simple, and beautiful, and did not at all take into consideration the fact that this would require there to be A Person In Charge Of Sheets. Since my mom is the oldest child in her family, and I am the oldest child in my family, this duty fell to the two of us.
So we headed off to the local Giant Shopping Mart, but unfortunately there was no section labeled, “Linens for the Soon-To-Be-Deceased”, or, “Easy Coffin Accessories”, so we were forced to stand in the middle of the sheet and towel aisle and have the following conversation:
“Do you think a queen sized sheet will be big enough to wrap all the way around her?”
“I don’t know. I think it depends on whether the body is laid end-to-end or diagonally.”
“Will a top sheet be enough to wrap the body in, or do you think we need a fitted sheet too?”
Are you imagining what you would be thinking if you overheard this conversation? Because my mom and I sure were. As if the situation weren’t stressful enough already, we decided to go ahead and come up with a list of all the ways someone could misinterpret what they were hearing and decide to report us to the authorities. (Sometimes being an avid reader with a powerful imagination can actually be a disadvantage).
I’m happy to say that we did survive that shopping trip, but maybe you can see why I sometimes envy cats their simple, direct method of communication. Although I somehow doubt that coughing up a hairball and then rolling over to lick my private parts would really have been an appropriate response to this situation.
In honor of today being my 9th wedding anniversary, I thought I’d write a little about how my husband and I have worked out our own particular division of marital labor in order to ensure a smooth, well-running relationship. Because there are certain things they just don’t cover in premarital counseling, such as how to adjust to the fact that each of you deals with stress differently.
When it comes to handling stressful situations, my husband is in charge of Being Calm, which is best illustrated through the following story.
After we’d been married for three years we bought our first house, and after we’d lived in our house for six months we had a really bad ice storm. We thought the worst that happened was that we lost power, but we soon discovered just how wrong we were when I walked into our bedroom and saw a GI-NORMOUS tree sticking through the roof.
Naturally I called for my husband, and he responded by saying, “What?” Now I’m sure you can picture this situation, so you know the tone I was using. It was not, “Could you please come in here when you get a minute, hon?” It was, “COME! NOW! BAD!” Fortunately he decided to amble in and see what was going on. That was good because I only had the one yell in me, and then I lost all ability to speak and was reduced to quiet whimpering.
So he came into the room while talking on the cell phone to his dad, saw the giant hole in our roof, and… started describing it in precise, rational, scientific terms to his father. Like, “Hm, the hole is about the size of a dinner plate, and the tree is protruding approximately eighteen inches down from the ceiling.”
And I’m standing there looking at him, the love of my life, the man I waited seven years to marry, and I’m thinking, “Who are you, and what is the MATTER with you?! Why are you not freaking out when CLEARLY that is the response called for in this situation?!”
But this is where the whole division of labor thing came in handy, because he calmly organized some roof triage, and I got to come up with a funny story to tell people.
However there are some times when being calm can backfire on you, and that is where I come in. So in addition to Getting To Do All Of The Freaking Out, in stressful situations I am also in charge of Reasonable Expectations. And I have a story for that too.
About a month after moving into our house, things were going well. I was enjoying unpacking and decorating, and I had just gotten a new job working at a bookstore, which is something I always wanted to try.
One day my husband came home from work and announced that there was a position open at his job for someone to go to Denmark for a year. And he thought we should go. And…he was serious. He honestly believed that this was absolutely the best, most rational, most logical next step for the direction of our lives. And he was upset when I responded by bursting into tears and crying for like, an entire day. He said, “I don’t understand why we can’t discuss this rationally.”
So here we are six years later (still living in America), and we’ve gotten our routine down pretty well. He is in charge of Things That Sting, Time, Calling People On The Phone, and Knowing How To Get Around In Any Given Location, and I am in charge of Funny Smells, Sneaking In Decluttering So He Doesn’t Notice It, Knowing Things About People, and Holding His Drink When We Go Out Somewhere.
It works for us.
