Friday, September 24, 2010

How Was I Supposed to Know That You Didn't Want to Go Mattress Gliding?

     For the Realtor it's LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION! For me it's COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION! I live on the I-V drip of communication. I would not have done well in primitive days of cave drawing and grunting. I need words. I need to think about them, prepare them, and then speak them. I don't just spurt out words. No, they are carefully selected like when I shop for a gift for you. I walk in and around the aisles imagining you receiving the gift, opening it and then your reaction to the gift. I like to give great gifts that are totally practical or totally frivolous. What matters is: did it do something for you? Same for me with words. So needless to say I have a black hole in my marriage in this area. I am married to the cliche' "tall, dark, and handsome" AND "the strong, silent type". That is the description of my husband.

     Words are cumbersome to my Cuban man. In some way, he thinks I should hear him think and know his precise thoughts. Sadly, after being married to him for so long, I do. But I need words like a shopaholic needs retail therapy. After reading The Five Love Languages I confirm that my love language is 'words of affirmation' and do you know what my mate of 35 years is? Words? No...'touch'. His is touch. So guess what we end up giving each other. I give him words, he gives me touch. Black hole.

     I really have to work on giving him the touch, especially when, to me, words are so befitting for every situation, like flowers, not so with touch. My husband and I are DIYers. We build, make, and do everything ourselves. In fact a running joke for a while was that the Sumners children needed braces and Dane and Jeanna were going to make them themselves. Boy, do we have some stories about non-communicating to tell you. We have on  *n u m e r o u s* occasions gone into situations with me equipped to receive words, such as instructions to how something is to be done or carried out, but have gotten caught up in the situation and don't get any. Such as it was this particular day a few years back in our earlier years of guessing what was in my hubands head...

   We purchase a king size mattress and box springs. We go to get it ourselves, no delivery trucks and fees for us! My man loads the newly purchased mattress and box springs on the bed of our 4-door dually and we get in the truck to drive home. So, there we are, riding down Highway 280 and we begin to notice that the mattress is catching some air and lifting a bit off the box springs, this would be because we didn't take rope to secure the m&bs, I'll call it. Being young and invincible, my husband decides that I should drive and he'd lie on top of the m&bs, in the back of the truck, to keep them from catching air. That was the last communication I received from him on the matter. I winged the rest.

    Considering it was summer, I have the windows rolled up and the A/C blowing and the radio going pretty loud and I'm traveling at the maximum of the speed limit. As I was, I began to see the top of Dane's hair coming in view of the rear-view mirror. But then it went down. But it came up again, and this time it had forehead with it. But it went down again. It happened again but with eyes added to it, and may I say they were huge, bugged-out kind of eyes. I had thoughts that there might be a problem 'arising' but the reality of it did not strike until the eyes went down and came back up with a huge, opened wide, and screaming mouth to match the eyes! My lightning fast mind realized that he was catching air on the mattress and was gliding in mid-air in the back of the truck, going down Highway 280 and at a pretty aggressive speed.

     I pull over on the shoulder of the road because of the non-verbal communication his face was giving me. When I got out of the truck, I got some communication. First, he shrieked. Then he asked me a lot of questions in a shrill voice like, "What was I thinking?" and, "Could I not see he was airborne?" and then I got the instructions I needed all along, in a drill instructor's tone he barked, "Roll down the blame windows, turn off the radio, go slower, and listen for me if I need to tell you something." I got back in the truck thinking that he should of said what he wanted in the first place.

     On that day, we actually by accident invented the extreme sport of mattress gliding. Though it has never really 'taken off'. (Pun intended.) My thoughts on the matter...next time I'll betcha you'll give me some kind of communicated instructions. No, this did not happen. We repeatedly have done this type of thing over and over again...until the day came I stopped the madness. Who knows if it was the day, I pulled him with a chain across town in our cars, with no instruction on whose brakes you use to stop or if it was the time we lifted a 300 pound air conditioner over our heads to put in a window, with no instructions or maybe it was the day he placed a giant air gun in my hands and asked me to un-rivet the screws holding the doors on his prized '66 Chevy II (with no instructions). I say..."You get what you get, and don't complain a bit!"

     This is but a small glimpse of what's it was like living in my silent world of guessing how my husband wants something done. But, I did take the reins and now when asked to do He-man type of things, we have a meeting of communication and words of instruction. Even if it is while I am in the middle of holding his feet as he leans off our 2 story commercial building roof, waist and head hanging over the street below as he paints the wall. It's better than no words at all.

4 comments:

  1. HILARIOUS!!!! AND SO TRUE FOR SO MANY...

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  2. Jeanna.... I love it! Hal and I often get into similar situations! I have just recently told him - that I would have thought after 35 years, we would be doing better on this communication thing! LOL!

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  3. The Ten commandments of Marriage:
    1.) Communication 2.) Communication
    3.) Communication 4.) Communication
    5.) Repent 6.) Communication
    7.) Communication 8.) Communication
    9.) Communication 10.) Repent

    LOL!

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  4. Lol. Every day for the last 35 years! If I stay awake for him to come home from work to ask how a particular situation at work went, he'll say, "Fine...it went fine." Seriously?? No details, no words...just "Fine"...after I've been praying and concerned for him and stayed up all night? Fine. :)

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