Marriage and Flying Saucers

Marriage and Flying Saucers

by Doug Jacquier

My wife believes in flying saucers. And cups. And dinner plates. Even the occasional saucepan sails through space toward my beleaguered semi-deaf head. I say ‘semi-deaf’ because my hearing declined significantly after I was run over by that truck on Main St. But I digress.

The problem is my wife’s frustration with what she sees as an irredeemable flaw in my character, namely that her pearls of wisdom, not to mention her specific instructions, don’t seem to arrive at my ears as often as she would like and those that do arrive are somehow transformed into only a fair facsimile of what she believes she originally uttered. 

She said living with me was like a never-ending game of Chinese whispers. I said it wasn’t fair that she whispered to me in Chinese when she knew I had a hearing deficit. The electric frypan has never been the same since.

Eventually, to keep the peace (or should I say ‘pieces’ of our remaining serviceable crockery), I agreed to have my hearing tested, if only to convince my wife of the error of her whispering ways. 

A very pleasant young audiologist took me through a series of challenges and she seemed very pleased when I indicated that I could detect a range usually only achievable by dogs and children at a great distance when dinner’s ready. She seemed very confused however when I related a recipe back to her that she seemed somehow to have confused with the Lord’s Prayer. University standards these days; what can you say?

She recommended hearing aids, for what seemed to her the very reasonable price of handing over our firstborn grandchild and the deed to the farm. I said I’d sleep on it and went home to my wife with what I believed were some very creditable lies I’d prepared. There went the rest of the wedding dinner service.

So, I succumbed to pieces of electronic gadgetry being inserted into my aural orifices and awaited the miracles I had been promised. 

This cornucopia of delights included the agony of our granddaughter’s primary school choir singing, the avalanche of clichés possessed by football commentators, and learning the gruesome details of whatever Third World country was currently at war/starving/suffering an epidemic. To say I was unconvinced that I had been delivered of a serious affliction is like saying that a man with chronic headaches was unconvinced of the need for his decapitation to cure the problem.

So, whenever I thought I could safely do so, I stuffed these harbingers of horror in my pocket and only retrieved them when my wife hove into view. And that worked fine for a brief time but I was soon a nervous wreck from her sneaking up behind me.

A compromise of sorts emerged with the idea of her sending me text messages when it was something important, the theory being there would be no room for argument about what I was required to do.

An admirable plan indeed, were it not for my wife’s propensity to be, shall we say, creative in her spelling. The early warning signs were there when she asked me to buy some naval oranges and I confused the greengrocer no end when I insisted on the ones that sailors eat. And imagine my shock when she said she was going over to her sister’s to help her with her dying.

The plan finally collapsed under the weight of the fiasco of her finding me and the local priest in the barn after she’d told me to exorcize the horses.

So now we just make sure we’re standing close enough to ensure clear communication, although this has led to dancing and who knows where that might end?