The Case of the Missing Conversation

“Okay, let’s go.” My husband of thirty-plus years jangled car keys at me.

Surely the shock on my face could be seen from space.

“What are you talking about? Go where?”

My husband made that face he makes when he thinks that I’m being obtuse or uppity or stubborn. He makes that face a lot.

“Sherwood, I’m in my bathrobe. I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about or where you think that we are going,” I yipped.

I was, in fact, standing in my bathrobe—a fluffy yellow affair that I tied with a worn out purple poke-a-dot bathrobe belt because I had lost the belt to my present fluffy yellow bathrobe affair.  I happen to know that I looked like an out of work circus clown.

“We talked about it.” He was insistent.

The furrows between my eyes became trenches.

“We talked about it? In this life? Where my eyes open?” The trenches between my eyes collapsed into earthquake fault lines.

“Sure, you know, that time when we talked about it.”

“Honey, look at my face.”

He looked at my face.

“See this?” I said, pointing at my face. “This is shock. I could not be more shocked. Do you think that if we had talked about this I would look this shocked?”

I pointed to my feet.

“See these?” I wiggled my toes in my No-Nonsense socks from Walmart. “These are socks. I’m in my bathrobe, and I have no idea what you think we talked about. I am not dressed for going anywhere, nor will I be anytime soon.”

For the first time, he seemed unsure of the alleged conversation.

“Well, . . . maybe . . . you forgot.”

I re-tied my purple poke-a-dot belt and tipped my furrowed forehead at him.

“Maybe, and maybe you have conversations in your head that you think I can hear because you’re thinking extra loudly.”

His brow furrowed.The conversation deteriorated from that point, but at least I remember that it occurred in this dimension.
I appreciate that my husband and I have been blissfully wedded for thirty-plus years. I appreciate that he thinks we have reached a state of sync that means we can read each other’s minds. I appreciate ESP. I just wish it were true. Well, maybe next year.

Here’s to conversations that happen in real time and with audible words.

Linda (Read My Lips—Out Loud) Zern