She Thurmans My Travolta
October 4, 2005
Filed under:The Number Nine
Having a history of sports and competition throughout my life, I tend to think that I’ve got the grasp of any particular undertaking via my own observations and skills, yet I willingly ask for instruction from someone who is obviously more skilled. I’d openly asked my bespectacled, geek game playing, doctoring, brother-in-law, Doc to show me the different ways of kicking a footy after my other brother-in-law Chris had attempted to do so.
I watched, I tried, I learned, I got the hang of it, and only after I truly grasped the technique and all of it’s machinations did I realize that my wife had been doing it perfectly all along, and that all the instruction I had been giving her was WRONG.
That’s right. She kicks the footy perfectly already, with no instruction, and for this (and too-many-to-list-other reasons) she outright ROCKS.
I’ll further elaborate on her outright Rockiness after I’ve given her her second skating lesson (which she rocks at too, already, with little instruction), because I want to save some of my shameless gushing for later.
My personality tends to be that of a problem solver. I see something that isn’t working quite correctly, and I apply enough of a solution to it to provide my desired ends. The fridge door, for example, wasn’t shutting properly. The frost from the inner freezer had grown so thick that it’s door couldn’t shut, thereby preventing the fridge door from closing.
Having a simple mind means that I need to focus on one thing at a time. Preparing dinner means that I’m limited in my “fixing” to simply slamming the door harder and harder in an effort to get it to shut. I’m not completely stupid *cough* and can realize that the frost isn’t budging, so I grabbed the nearest solid object, a can opener, and began chipping away at the minor obstruction, hoping to clear just enough to close the door despite the obvious need for a more strenuous effort.
Wife is a fixer as well. The almost supernatural similarities between the two of us sometimes startle me. When chip-chip-chipping away at an amoebic-looking chunk of ice with a smallish can opener, a large meat cleaver suddenly appearing and hacking off said chunk of ice startles me almost as much.
I saw a problem, she saw the same problem. I affected a minor solution, she decided to ratchet that solution up a bit. After watching her delightedly hacking away and blanketing the floor in a spray of ice chips, dinner was forgotten for a bit for repeated horror-movie swings of the oversized cutting tool and the ensuing clean-up consisting of the two of us standing on large towels, and twisting and dancing a la Pulp Fiction.
We may pretend we’re all adultish, paying bills and being responsible and all that shit, but when an opportunity arises to seize an “adult responsibility moment” (like defrosting a fridge or cleaning it up) and make it as childishly enjoyable as possible (like screaming, “Die-Frost!” or being John to her Uma), Wife subtly reminds me that we need to grab on to that opportunity with both hands.