Man Talk

I am a retired English teacher who spent 34 years listening to adolescents talk.  During that time, I learned rap jargon, Spanglish and crew/tagger idioms to name just a few.  I’m no authority on universal communication but I can understand what is being said to me and conversely be understood.

My husband. JB, is another story.  When he says he’ll be home at 5:30pm for supper that really means ‘I’ll be home sometime before 6:30pm depending on what the guys are doing after work’.  Phone calls are another type of communication gap.  After a call from JB’s dad, his typical response is something about the weather and his dad’s health.  A day later, the ‘trickle-down’ factor begins:

Did I tell you my dad is coming to visit for the month of January with his girlfriend and they’ll be staying with us?  When I respond “No” in an aggravated tone because the last time his 90 year old dad and 89 year old ‘girlfriend’ stayed with us, I had to sleep on the floor in my computer room.  They demand separate bedrooms and bathroooms even though they cohabitate the other 335 days of the year.  The family is supposed to pretend we don’t know this fact.  JB translates my ‘No’ into ‘I hate his father and want him to stay in a hotel.’

Two days later:

Did I tell you our niece is pregnant again?  When I respond “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”he gets defensive about me accusing him of purposely forgetting to tell me important news.  (I’m not sure how you get that translation from ‘why didn’t you tell me sooner’)  This is the niece who does not want to have children even though her husband has the opposite view.  That’s a story for another time.

So I guess that our miscommunication perpetuates the concept that ‘men are from Mars and women from Venus’.   I know that I love my Martian but will probably misunderstand that “the dog had a rough day hunting” really means “the dog’s at the vet getting 15 stitches”.  But what do I know–I’m just a woman!