Warming Up - Exercise 17

It’s Not Easy Being Married to Alex

            It’s not easy being married to Alex. At the same time, I wouldn’t trade places with anyone. He’s mine.  I won’t let him go, and I won’t let anyone try to take him away. And I hope by the time I end this piece, you’ll all understand how I can say all those things and mean them.

            First, Alex is a Brit. More precisely, he is a Geordie, from the extreme north-east of England, near Newcastle, 60 miles south of Scottland. And that means he speaks with a funny accent. It’s not a posh Oxbridge upper class accent – he speaks Geordie.  It goes something like this, “Eeeh, it was narf pissin down last night.” And if I have to ask him more than once to repeat what he said, he says, “Aw, forgerrit.”

            He uses expressions that don’t mean what I think they mean. "Wa George" means his uncle George.  And "our kid" means his younger brother Wayne, not our son Simon. I nearly fell out of my chair the day he started telling me about when he “served his time.”  He meant when he served his engineering apprenticeship, not a jail or prison sentence. When I ask him a question, like, “Do you think I should call my Dad?” He’ll respond, “I think you should do.” “Do what?” says I.

            He uses strange weights and measures. It’s difficult enough to keep track of my progress maintaining (ha, ha) my weight, but for him to understand me, I have to track my numbers in both pounds and something called stones. 140 pounds – my target weight – is 10 stone. That number is so small I can’t figure out how anyone can weigh so little.

            Second, Alex is an extreme extrovert.

      He’ll talk to anyone. If there is someone in the elevator when we get in, Alex will strike up a conversation. He’ll talk to anyone about anything. The weather, religion, politics. I mean it – about anything. And he’ll talk to anyone about anyone else he knows. When he travels to England I cringe when I think of the number of people he has had access to there – people who then know my deepest darkest secrets.

            I had to learn to behave like an extrovert in order not to be invisible next to him.  I discovered this when a friend of a friend called to invite Alex and me to a party. Alex was working in Abu Dhabi at the time, so I told her I would be happy to come, but Alex was out of the country. She could barely disguise her disappointment.

            A few years back, one of my Toastmasters clubs held a holiday party at the Fort Meyer Officers’ Club. I had weeks to prepare a toast for the event. But on the night, once Alex had introduced himself to everyone, one of the club officers invited Alex to give a toast, too. He did. His was better than mine.

            Third, Alex is, well, Alex.

            He doesn’t have even a nodding acquaintance with antecedents. While we are driving down the road, Alex will turn to me and tell me something out of the blue like, “That was pretty stupid of him.” I don’t know what “that” or who “him” refers to. I’m just supposed to know. He expects me to be able to read his mind.

            He loves an argument. His favorite topic is the American Revolution which he always claims was really just a tax write-off to get rid of the colonials.

            He constantly asks me if I have my keys, my badge, my green bag, my lunch, you name it before we leave the house – as though I were his child, not his wife. But when he is in England I often discover I have run out of clean underwear – because he wasn't around to pay attention and remind me.

            The bottom line – it is not easy being married to Alex. I don’t always understand him, even when I understand his words. But if I don’t pay attention to what he says, I may learn from strangers that they know what I didn’t understand. Then, because he loves an argument, I can’t even let him know when I’m upset because that just gives him another opportunity for his favorite activity. 

Warming Up - Exercise 16

Context is Everything

       What we see, hear, and understand is shaped by contest.  To illustrate, here’s a story of how what we understand serves as context.

       Many years ago, before cell phones, Google earth, and GPS, I was at an event in Berkeley, California, with my friend Doug who introduced me to one of his high school friends, Paul. After the introduction, Doug asked if anything interesting had happened recently. Paul said yeah, something very interesting had happened the other day. Because Paul had to go to San Francisco, he called his sister to ask for her help to find a parking spot. His sister said she would try.  After a minute – just enough time for his sister to go to the window and look out – she told Paul she thought she had found a spot for him three spaces up from the corner of California and Van Ness. She said the spot was in front of a car that was either red or white, she couldn’t be sure about the color. So Paul drove from Berkeley to San Francisco where he found a spot just where his sister had told him to look. Behind it was a small white car with enormous red tail lights.  My friend Doug then looked over at Paul and said “Wow! That IS interesting.”

       I, on the other hand, sat there, wondering what my friend Doug has been smoking. The two of them kept on talking until I just couldn’t stand it. I finally blurted out, “What was so interesting about that story?” Doug replied, “Paul’s sister lives in San Jose. She has ESP.”

       Context is everything. What we see is shaped by context. Consider the Ebbinghaus Illusion to the right where the size of the circles around the central circles disguise the fact that both central circles are exactly the same size.

       Context is everything.  What we hear depends on context.

       A few years ago in Germany, my downstairs neighbor Tim had an African grey parrot. These birds live to be very old, and they are also very smart. They are particularly good at mimicking sounds. Tim’s bird, Francis, was no exception.  Francis was particularly adept at mimicking sounds that resulted in all eyes turning to face him. Such as at a dinner party when Francis would be left on his perch in the living room while Tim and his guests sat in the adjoining dining room – close enough for Francis to see us, but far enough away that all conversation was contained among the humans. Francis could imitate the conversation – using nonsense sounds to mimic the rising and falling intonation patterns of sentences. So we would occasionally hear him vocalizing in this way, as though he thought he could join into our conversation. But when the guests didn’t turn his way, Francis would mimic language in a manner more likely to get everyone’s attention: he spoke a string of foul-mouthed words that caused even the most sophisticated among us to look up.

       One time, Tim he had had enough of Francis’ bad language. Leaving his guests at the table, Tim took Francis into the kitchen. We heard Tim say “Bad bird” a couple of times, after which Tim returned, put Francis back onto his perch and rejoined us at the table.  Surprisingly, Francis remained quiet the rest of the evening.

       I finally had to ask Tim what he had done and why it had resulted in Francis’s change in behavior. Tim said it was simple. One day when he was putting groceries away, Francis was in the kitchen with him and to get Tim’s attention, Francis began chewing packages on the counter. Tim happened to have a frozen turkey in his hands at the time. He turned to Francis and said “Bad bird,” while he opened the freezer to put the turkey away.  Tim noticed that Francis stopped picking at the carton and became very quiet. Since then, Tim could silence Francis by bringing him into the kitchen, opening the freezer door, and say “Bad bird” first to the turkey, and then to Francis. Francis got the message.

     Context is Everything. What we see, hear, understand, and therefore know, is shaped by context. Now, when I think I see, hear, or understand something worth condemning, I make sure I understand the context before acting on that conclusion.

Warming Up - Exercise 15

Better Than The Alternative

            I really don’t understand why, now that I am over 60, every man of any age who opens doors for me, serves me in restaurants or stores or just drives my bus calls me “young lady.” Who do they think they are kidding? I’m not young. And while I am also not yet old, I clearly qualify as older. In other words, I am a person who has stopped growing at both ends and now spends all my time struggling to keep from growing in the middle. Getting old SUCKS. But it is better than the alternative.

            Getting old affects everything – Body, Mind, and Spirit. I’ve been observing this in my father recently. And I know it is time to watch out for myself.

            Let's look at Body first. Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty. But everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out. Then there are the senses. With age, one's peripheral vision is reduced.  Lenses in the eye become clouded, requiring stronger light for me to be able to see. The result, I don’t recognize people I pass in the hallway.

            And then there is Hearing. I’d really like someone to answer the question, “How many times is it appropriate to say ‘What?’ before I can just nod and smile because I still didn't hear or understand a word they said?”

            Mobility is also affected. The other day my husband got stuck on the ground in our driveway when he sat down to fix a plastic part within the wheel well of our car – and then he couldn’t get up.

            Each year seems to rob me of my strength. The other day I realized I don’t have the strength needed to keep my arms raised to look at dresses on the rack during Ross’ Dress Week Event.

            Whether the body weakens more quickly than the mind is a question I still wrestle with. For example, the first area of the brain affected by memory loss handles names. And wouldn’t you know it – when I need to look up someone in a directory, I can only remember the first name. But when I meet someone in the corridor, I can only remember the last name.

            Did you hear about the 83-year-old woman who talked herself out of a speeding ticket by telling the young officer that she had to get there before she forgot where she was going?

            I spend a lot of time working on cross word puzzles, jig saw puzzles, and computer games, trying to keep the neural pathways in use to retard the rate of mental deterioration. And I joined Luminosity recently to improve my brain functioning the scientific way. Thank goodness they send me a daily reminder to complete the exercises.

           The Spirit is also affected, bringing forward different personal traits as dominant. Stubbornness is common. For example, my friend’s father is 94 and he still insists on driving to and from the hospital for “procedures.” According to hospital regulations, patients are required to be escorted out in a wheelchair when being discharged. A student nurse was having some trouble with an elderly gentleman who insisted that he did not need a wheelchair. After some discussion about rules being rules, he reluctantly agreed. As she was wheeling him out, the student nurse asked the man if his wife was going to pick him up. "I don't know," he replied. "She's still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown."

            I have my own serenity prayer: God grant me the serenity 
to do the things I can do; courage to ask for help with things I can’t; and wisdom to know the difference.

            In closing, I am reminded of a group of residents at my Dad’s former independent living apartment who were sitting around talking about their ailments. One woman complained that her arms are so weak she can barely hold a cup of coffee. Another followed up that her cataracts are so bad she can't even see her coffee.  A gentleman added that he can't turn his head because of the arthritis in his neck, to which several nodded in agreement.  Another man reported that his blood pressure pills make him dizzy. "I guess that's the price we pay for getting old," he winced as he shook his head. There was a short moment of silence. Then the optimist among them spoke up. "Well, it's not that bad," she said. "Thank God, we can all still drive"!