We may be hermits but that doesn’t mean we want to be incommunicado.
<thok><thok><thok> Is this thing on?
Can you hear me now?
Over there gekko says, “Don’t be jerks. Talk. Honestly.”
gekko and I talk by cell more often than by almost anything other means but smoke signals. Repetition and signal checks take up 13.3% of every conversation.
Hang on, my earbud fell out.
For the rest, we talk about what everybody does. Our families, our friends (yeppers, we most assuredly talk about you), the weather, our jobs, politics, the news, FOOFery, and what we watched on the t00b last night. Nothing unique there.
But we are blessed.
We can spin what the family foisted on us, what is falling on our heads, what we heard on the radio, what Facebook foisted on us into a nearly continuous conversation. Unlike teenagers, we rarely watch t00b “together” in different states but we do “hang out” on the phone.
I thought we knew a lot about each other’s families, but no. gekko didn’t know that my great grandfather paid my great grandmother’s tuition at Swarthmore before he would marry her or that my father’s first cousin Reuben, a profoundly deaf engineer, found his deafness an asset when he rode the centrifuge in the early NASA tests. I didn’t know her great grandfather presided over the trial of a notorious cannibal. Still lots more ground to cover there.
Most readers know we multi-task during drive time. I generally go on walkies while she commutes. That gives plenty of opportunity to engage in weatherly commentary because it is right there in front of us, talk about whether the owls have their heads up out of their nest, and to meow at passing pussycats.
Last couple of days we’ve talked about decorating styles. The family room of a “colonial style” two story home she described is predominantly black, white, and shades of gray and silver.
I’m not sure I have a “style” although my eye is most drawn to the houses of Chester County that I grew up in. I have a mix of Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton furniture, the latter mostly neoclassic, Federal style. I like the plain, straight legs and tapered arrow feet Hepplewhite often used. That is one reason I don’t own a sofa in North Puffin.
She has some podcasts and several Kindle books on the Droid. I have one audio book and a bunch of Podcasts on the iPod but she can store more on her Droid. We both listen to the “news” that way when we are driving or at the gym and not talking to each other. Podcasts help gekko facilitate the procurement of her bagel-shaped food objects and to listen to some Android Central info (did you know she has a Droid?). Newsweek broadcast a segment on treatment center cancer survival rates. The Naked Scientists explored neuromarketing or how a knowledge of your brain and behavior can help marketers to manipulate your buying habits.
And, of course, we dissected each of those.
gekko is not always interested in the 18-mile boondoggle here in the Keys. I’m not always interested in the project lead who caused her a bit of grief or whether TQM beats Six Sigma. But we talk about them because we are always interested in them.
“Don’t be jerks. Talk. Honestly.”
Speaking to the past. Speaking to the future.
Our list sounds kind of banal but we like it. Talking about all of that all the time means it is easy to talk about all of the other stuff like dates, and traveling, and marriage, and phone sex any time.
And, yes, we analyze our relationship. Incessantly. But you knew that, didn’t you?
[Editors Note: gekko and I shared a four-part polylocution plus these Afterglow posts. Please visit her companion piece, On Love, and use The Poly Posts index for the entire series and for other resources.]
In the interests of protecting the unexpected, this isn’t that photo. But it is similar.
