I have often said that my wife is the social butterfly of the family. Always the energetic and charismatic force in the room, she’s overwhelmingly friendly and always gives those that she meets the benefit of the doubt. After being in the room for five minutes with her, everyone knows exactly who she is and what she is about.
Myself, on the other hand…I’m the smart-mouthed introvert standing intently nearby. The guy quietly observing the mannerisms and dialogue of those around him, so that he can figure out their agenda or self-serving angle. Quick with the sarcasm, no one gets a free pass from me until they are a proven commodity in my world.
The irresistible socialite and the irreverent skeptic. We make a great team.
Unfortunately, sometimes those opposing talents in the social graces can present some unforeseen problems. For me, talking more than I should used to result in some guy attempting a roundhouse at my face. For my wife, however, it appears to be more a physical reaction than third party response. It has resulted in a voice that has gotten steadily more hoarse and weaker by the day.
After going several weeks with this deteriorating condition, she finally decided to see a doctor. Diagnosis? Vocal fold hemorrhage. That’s basically “badly bruised” vocal cords for those of us that got laughed at by our guidance counselors for articulating medical school aspirations. The treatment? No talking for ten days. No murmuring, no whispering, no nothing. In short, complete silence.
“No talking unless you’re getting paid to do it.”
Yikes. Time to hide the wallet…
The doctor went on further by threatening that if her voice didn’t improve within that ten day timeframe, she was going to send her to a voice pathologist to learn how to talk differently.
Time to consult our medical deductible as well…
Looking at the plus side of this warning, however, we explained the doctor’s threat in detail to our darling brood. This, in an effort to help minimize the multiple direction-giving sessions that we are seemingly required to provide to them on an hourly basis. Following that conversation though, a noticeable confusion appeared across my son’s face.
“You mean she’s going to talk in a different accent?”
Never one to let such an easy opportunity go to waste, I immediately leapt into character with a terribly over-the-top English accent. “Blimey…she’ll have to like this from here on out, matey!”
Thinking back, I’m not even entirely sure he realized that I was joking. Better to tuck that little gem away for future use…
Along those same disconnected lines, I called my parents that evening to alert them of her diagnosis. My mom asked if she was hoarse from yelling at the meet. She was obviously referring to us cheering loudly for our children at their swim meets every Wednesday night. Overhearing this one-way conversation in the background, however, my father instantly drew a fairly warped, far left-field mental picture instead. Given my wife’s propensity for watching the Food Network and cooking deliciously exotic meals, he later confessed that he had literally pictured her screaming at food. Yes…yelling at the meat.
“Stupid bacon…cook faster! And you’re next, idiot rump roast!”
Shall we just top this macabre vision off with a bloody butcher’s apron and an industrial-sized tenderizing hammer? Seems fitting.
Yes, while some may be able to trace their family’s ancestry back hundreds of years, I can actually trace my family’s lunacy gene down from one generation to the next. It’s a lot like the ABC celebrity reality show “Who Do You Think You Are”…just sprinkled with a healthy dose of the SyFy Network’s “Insane or Inspired” for good measure.
Unfortunately though, even with all of the awful Monty Python imitations and grisly PETA night-terrors tucked gently away, it was time to put the doctor’s orders into action. Ten days without talking. Ten days for this extremely dedicated, outgoing wife and mother of three?
“You’ve gotta ask yourself one question. ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do you ya punk?”
Making every attempt to meet doctor’s orders, and with all of the best intentions, what has ensued since could best be described as “charades for the clinically insane”. Hand signals and body language very much open to interpretation, of which I immediately pounce on and exploit to the sickest extent of my twisted capacities.
One evening, my better half told me to go down to the basement with a shovel and search for Jimmy Hoffa. “Whoa there…take it easy, Mrs. Corleone.” Using a variety of exceedingly more colorful hand gestures thereafter though, I was made to understand that she was kindly asking me to get the ice cream out of the freezer downstairs and scoop some out for the kids.
Yet another day, she asked me to make some sandwiches for the kids. In retrospect, she was actually very creative in miming exactly how to make a sandwich. Right down to splitting up the bread and spreading the mayo. For a brief moment there, I actually waited for an encore performance where she would be trapped inside an invisible box. However, my interpretation ultimately led me to openly quote the 1990s Bell Biv DeVoe song “Poison”. “Smack it up, flip it, rub it down? Oh no?“
While I will admit that some of my analyses may wander astray on occasion, I was of the firm belief that we were making some real, measureable progress!
Over the course of time though, our little game of charades had digressed into a puzzling flurry of rudimentary gang signs. Recently, she asked me several times to get the pretzels out of the pantry by using some new hand gestures that were unfamiliar to me. Confused, the only reply that came to mind was to reciprocate using my own contorted assembly of hand signals while shouting “Vatos Locos forever! Blood in, blood out, ese!”
Upon witnessing this bizarre exchange, our two daughters had now officially joined our son in the family’s resident state of confusion.
Let’s be realistic. Try as she may, it’s virtually impossible to raise three kids and one man-child without using your voice. Making matters worse is the fact that our kids have been essentially trained from birth to ask mom for anything first-and-foremost. This due to the fact that mom is practically with them 24 hours a day and the fact that dad typically defers to what mom would “probably” say anyhow. In essence, I’m really just the used car salesman of the family. Why would they bother with the middle man when they can just go straight to the source?
I will admit that, being the observational introvert, the role reversal has not been an easy transition for our household. Recent efforts to quell disputes have led me to resort to widely exaggerated threats of Armageddon, in stances where I would normally remain quiet and let my wife’s matriarchal voice of sanity prevail. Be it for my own personal amusement or just due to outright confusion, a lot also gets lost in translation. Follow-up discussions of specific connotation and basic civility with our children have become the norm these days.
To give myself some credit though, I have begun to post some real gains in my long-term memory retention regarding certain hand gestures. “I’m going to choke the life out of you” is fairly well engrained. The “knock it off” throat-slash is yet another dandy. For all intents-and-purposes though, the “you’re not funny” gesture is one that is already pretty widely known.
