Yall. Listen. I love my husband to BITS, but sometimes he just does stuff that drives me bananas. And I don’t mean normal stuff, like the fact that he’s 42 and still has to tear the house apart every single morning to find his keys and wallet, even though I bought a little rack specifically for that more than fifteen years ago.
No, I mean stuff that makes you wonder where his head is at, like putting salt in his coffee instead of sugar, or picking up the ketchup bottle for a drink instead of the tea glass sitting next to it. It’s just a weird level of auto-functioning while being checked out on the details. I don’t quite get it, but I’ve learned to live with it.
But also, I’m sort of the same way when it comes to hearing what people say. Like, I hear you… but I don’t hear you. I can audibly hear the sound of your voice, but it just sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher off in the background, no distinguishable words.
So, when you put us together, that leads to crazy frustration on some days, but no end of hilarity on others.
One day, we were driving down the road, headed to run some errands. He was going on about a particular model of guitar he had on his wish list. I don’t remember what it was, but it was crazy expensive. Anyway, I had long since zoned out as he waxed poetic about pickups and pots and caps and whatnot. And then he said, “I’m GETTING that guitar. I don’t care if I have to sell a kidney.”
But what I HEARD was, “I don’t care if I have to sell a KID.” Which, you know, I thought was a little extreme, but we do have a lot of kids, so I was willing to roll with it for the sake of in-the-moment humor. So I leaned into this thought experiment with interest, “Which one?”
“Hell, I don’t care. Both of them, if I have to.”
“Both? We have FIVE.”
He looked at me, completely incredulous, “Who the hell has five kidneys?”
“What?”
“What?”
“What are you talking about?”
“What are YOU talking about?”
A lot of our conversations end up like that. Another day, I woke up to the sound of retching coming from the bathroom. He has a very sensitive gag-reflex, so I’m used to hearing a little bit of gagging every morning when he brushes his teeth, but this particular morning, it was on another level. It really sounded like he was getting ready to call some dinosaurs.
I yelled down the hall, “Babe, you alright in there?”
And I swear to my time, I heard him say, “I thought Alex got me another toothbrush.”
But what he actually said was, “I accidentally put Icy Hot on my toothbrush.”
By the time we unraveled the situation, I thought I was going to have to call Poison Control.
In his defense, the tube wasn’t face up and it does sort of resemble a toothpaste tube.
But I did give serious thought to putting a child lock on the medicine cabinet.
Growing old (and senile) together is going to be so much fun, I can tell already.
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