A friend of mine was wedding last Saturday and I easily convinced boyfriend to accompany me. The wedding was nice and all but come lunch time, the plates were not enough for all of us. Other than wait and queue with the rest who included small kids, we decided to go buy food someplace else. Boyfriend was a little a lot hungry and his ulcers were getting the better of him. Either that or I was imagining my own things. Bottom line, one minute we’re standing at a French fries stand and the next we’re having a heated argument about, well…, French fries. The details of that argument are not important, but the bottom line is, I did something that surprised even me.
I’m normally very good when it comes to winning arguments. I’ll take a very light argument, make it personal, argue like my life depended on it, get angry if I have to(which is basically most of the times) and finally stop talking to whoever am arguing with like any mature person would do. This is especially worse if we’re arguing about gender balance. Let’s not even go there.
So this day I’m so angry I want to throw the fries that I’m carrying away. Then without warning, I start crying. No, not weeping softly into my handkerchief, no. I’m talking about wailing loudly while tears and all other unmentionable fluids roll down my face. I’m wiping my face messily with the back of my hand while I tell boyfriend rather loudly exactly how I feel. People are staring and I don’t care. He’s taken by surprise. He apologizes. I’m not even listening. He now thinks it’s funny and starts laughing and I cry a little bit harder and a little bit louder…
That has now been my life since boyfriend and I decided that we wanted to have a baby. I now do things that would make me cringe on a normal day.I’ll tell you all about that in coming posts.
And talking of boyfriend, I thought about replacing that word with a better one like say ‘baby’s daddy’ or ‘husband to soon be’ but he went and did something that made me change my mind.
I was in the kitchen eating (I do that a lot lately) when I heard him laughing from somewhere in the house. The polite thing to do would have been to ask what was funny, but I knew better. Knowing him the way I do, I knew that he’d have said that he just remembered a part in ‘How I met your Mum’; a part he’d probably made me watch like 17 times. And then he’d tell it to me all over again, and when I didn’t laugh he’d think that I’m not getting the joke. And I’d try to explain that I got the joke alright, and in fact thought that it was totally hilarious the first three times we watched it but after the 13th time hearing about it, and the 9th time watching it, the joke sort of stopped being so funny. I’d end the explanation with the classic line, ‘Maybe it’s just me…’
You see, it’s too much work. And who needs to go through that? Seeing that I was ignoring him, he laughed again, louder this time round. Before my mind could even remind my mouth to not say a word, I heard myself ask him whether he’d like to share the joke. He did. What followed was not funny at all.
Him: I was just reading your last blog post. How come you’re so funny on the blog and not funny at all in real life?
I thought he was kidding and expected him to wink twice when I looked at him. But when I did, what I saw was an innocent face staring right back at me. His expression said that he was waiting for an answer
I happen to be very good with comebacks. In fact my mind was spinning.
I could have told him to get off my blog and go read a particular one I felt would be appropriate for him at www.youarealsonotfunnybutyoudonthearmesayingittoyourface.com, but I didn’t.
I could have told him, ‘But look who’s now stuck with me for the rest of his life. You still think you’re so funny?’ But I didn’t.
Or I could have taken the high road; tell him to shut up while I ran away crying, but I still didn’t.
Instead, I had a smile on my face as I thought,’ Forget the cute names, I’ll continue calling you boyfriend on my blog.’
Who’s laughing now?
