Forget Mars and Venus. At least those two celestial bodies are in the same solar system. Ladies, have you had the conversation with your male partner who says, “Who is coming over again? I can never keep your friends straight.” Two minutes later he is reciting the yardage statistics of three running backs over four seasons on two teams. I love him, but mine can tell me how many yards to what number hole on which course and how many times he didn’t hit the fairway on it.
And it’s not age related. My sixth grader likes to watch TV with the captions on because he is hyperlexic and it helps him memorize the lines faster. Sure, we Gen-X folks were happy to be the first generation to have cable and watch movies so many times we knew all the best lines from The Breakfast Club, but watching a movie with a kid who is speaking. every. word. of dialogue in a 90-minute cartoon makes my head explode. This same kid, when asked what the teacher talked about in Social Studies today, says, “I’m not sure.”
Perhaps this isn’t universal but I can still remember a time before Google or IMDb when, if I didn’t know a fact or couldn’t remember the guy that was in the show with that other girl, I couldn’t find the answer in a matter of seconds and it would bother me until the show came on again or I got up and looked in an encyclopedia. Men aren’t obsessive like that. They are completely content to just keep on not knowing something. I’m working hard to acquire that skill. I think I would be a lot less unhealthy if I could also not care about stuff in a positive way.
Now that the pandemic is over (eyes rolling because it’s really just that the war, gas prices, and mid-terms are hogging the news) it will be nice to have the house back to a normal routine. Yes, we all spent a lot of time in each other’s spaces and I really wish I had a dollar for every time one of us said, “Why are you doing it that way?” I’m still not sure how it works that he hates the way I drive but always asks me to drive because he doesn’t want to. It’s amazing how he thinks the vehicle is a force field. If you were just walking down a hallway, and someone almost bumped into you, would you really turn and scream, “Idiot!” at them?
Anyway, happily, spouse and I do get along very well, although we still can’t agree on whose fault it is when moving the salt three inches to the right means he can’t see it. Science tells us men sense movement better than women, and women sense subtle changes in the environment. Perhaps he could find things faster if I just throw things to him.
Still, I love being married. When you’re just dating, you don’t have anyone to check your weird mole, you can’t eat dinner out of the pot standing over the stove, and you definitely can’t get excited about a text that says, “I found the scented dog waste bags you like.” You have a buddy who will hide in the bedroom to eat all the snacks you don’t want your kids to know you have, and we have also agreed that either of us ever wishes the other happy birthday or anniversary on Facebook, our friends should know we’ve been hacked.
This is us in 200 years because we starved to death during the “I don’t care, what do you want to eat?” conversation loop.
