She does have her faults, though. Such as the way she talks in the car.
I'm not referring to her occasional outbursts of pure, murderous rage when she's behind the wheel. She has very little patience (defined as "no patience whatsoever") with idiot drivers (defined as "everyone else on the road"), and she can be quite vocal at times about another driver's lack of legitimate birth, his or her sexual activities, and the state of their intellect.
No, what I'm referencing here is the way she communicates when I'm driving, and she's in the passenger seat. At those times, she transcends the mere verbal exchange of information, and launches into what can only be described as an interpretive dance.
I'm not sure why our family has such varying ways of talking in the car. I wrote recently about the frustrations of trying to get the right song playing for my four-year-old son. At least with him, though, there's almost no danger of being pounded on the forearm, because he's strapped into a car seat and is behind me. I can't say the same for my wife.
Now, part of this is my fault. My standing order/request/favor for my wife is "Never assume I know what I'm doing." Because frankly, at least 60 percent of the time, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just pretty good at looking like I know what I'm doing. To the point that strangers regularly come up to me in department stores and the like to ask me about the merchandise.
So she's gotten accustomed to pointing out things to me while I'm driving -- such as "You need to turn left up here" or "Cop to the right" or "You just ran over the Pope." And most of the time, it's good that she does this, because otherwise I never would have known it. But there are times it's a touch disconcerting.
Let me give you a couple of examples. Some time back, we were driving someplace at night, and she saw a small herd of deer standing near some trees by the road. She was very excited by this, so she (according to her) tapped me on the arm and said "Look at the deer over there."
What I experienced was slightly different than her version. I was driving along sedately, when suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt my wife pounding on my forearm yelling "DEAR! DEAR!" I thought she was trying to get my attention for some reason; maybe a yellowjacket had flown into the car, or I was about to run over Bigfoot and just hadn't noticed, or something like that. So I was yelling "WHAT?! WHAT!?"
That was her cue to hit me even harder on the arm and say even louder "DEAR!" She couldn't understand why I was being such an idiot - the deer were RIGHT THERE. Could I not see them?
It was some time before we got that one straightened out.
More recently, we were driving out of our neighborhood, and a squirrel ran in front of the car. This isn't an unusual occurrence; there are a lot of trees in our neighborhood, and we have a pretty sizeable squirrel population. For some reason, though, Kristin got pretty excited about it this time. She quickly raised her fisted hands to her shoulders and said "Squirrel!" very sharply. I looked over at her and said, "What?"
She took one of her fists from her shoulder and pointed with it. "There's a squirrel," she said, more calmly.
I agreed that yes, a squirrel had run in front of the car, but I didn't understand the corresponding motions. Apparently the international symbol for 'squirrel' is very similar to a boxer's stance -- assuming the boxer is experiencing severe muscle cramps.
I just pray we never pass a mariachi band playing "Felize Navidad" on the side of the road. Between my son and my wife, I may not survive that encounter.
(c) 2014 John Puckett
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