Sunday, March 15, 2015

My Quiet Husband

My husband, Dan, has a strange definition of "conversation." He truly believes he is talking to people when he is not.

It's fine with me. I always liked guys who didn't talk. In grade school, I wrote in my Ramona Quimby Diary that I liked another boy in my class "because he's quiet." Even at age eight, I knew what I wanted in a man.

But the funny thing is he overestimates the amount of talking he actually does.

If you ask him about the first time we talked, he will tell you that it was during a get together at his apartment. I was looking through instrument magazines, and he was playing around on his electric guitar.

During that encounter, I was actually talking to the girl sitting beside me about the magazines, and Dan was staring at the two of us while he played around on his guitar. I don't recall him saying anything to either one of us girls.

Fast-forward a few years later . . .

My principal asked me one afternoon, "Is your husband really quiet? I said, 'hi,' and he acted like, 'please don't talk to me.'"

"Yeah, that's him," I said. "He's not that shy. He just doesn't like to talk."

"That's fine. My wife's the same way," my principal said.

When I told Dan what my principal had said, he insisted, "But I did say, 'hi.' In fact, I said it first."

"I don't know that it's coming across that way," I said.

A few weeks ago at church, we heard about a couple giving up dinner in front of the T.V. for Lent. They decided they would eat facing one another and make conversation.

"We talk," Dan said when I lamented our T.V. tray evenings.

"Here is my version of conversation," I moved hands like a puppet and said, blah-blah-blah-blah, really fast, "Here's yours," and I sat in complete silence.
 

"No, mine is something more in the middle," Dan said, laughing. "Do you want to stop watching T.V. at dinner?"

"No way. We have too many shows to get through. Besides," I added, "we wouldn't have a place for our greenhouse if we clear the table."

Did I mention that our kitchen table is covered in houseplants?

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