Sunday, November 05, 2006

The Pundy House Eventide Home

When you’ve been married as long as we have you develop a private language that isn’t always easy to deconstruct.

It’s the history that obfuscates or, occasionally, elucidates. All those years of hurt, resentment, anger, happiness and, ultimately, disappointment.

Here’s a typical example:

Me (glaring): Have you farted?
The Wife (staring back blankly but boldly): No. I am quiescent, at the moment.

Two things about her reply drive me crazy. First off, there’s only two of us in the room and SOMEONE has farted. Ergo, SOMEONE is lying. Secondly, the quiet malevolence of the phrase “at the moment”. I spend the rest of the evening surreptitiously sniffing the air, my evening ruined, waiting for the next eruption.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:40 pm

    That's GREAT (Tony the Tiger voice). It needs to be in a book. I'm serious. Just write about your married life, and you'll have an instant bestseller.
    Witty and funny. I'm still chuckling over "at the moment," and the way it burned you up.

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  2. Anonymous4:42 pm

    How could you even utter that question aloud - please!

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  3. Hi daddy. Yeah, I'd have an instant bestseller AND an instant divorce. Let me raincheck that suggestion if I may.

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  4. Anonymous10:10 pm

    Brilliant....not that it ever happens in our house........

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  5. Anonymous10:25 pm

    At points like this I usually see I can out-trump them. Not very polite but such fun!

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  6. Anonymous3:57 am

    A similar thing happened to me not very long ago, though my wife was the accuser, I the deadpan denier. But she wasn't as nice a person as you, Bill, and after thirty years together the gloves were off. Without missing a beat she said, "Well then, you should probably brush your teeth."

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