What Not To Say

I love date nights. I'm always on my best behavior. Well...

It was not good. I'm not going to sugar coat it.

It was a simple dinner and movie kind of date with my husband. After the movie we decided to get a hot apple cider at one of our favorite coffee shops. As we were conversing my husband changed his mind on the issue at hand no less than four times. Always one to laugh at himself, he made the comment, "I am like a man blown in the wind."

There were so many things I could have said in response. A simple nod would have been a brilliant idea. But my mind reached back into the far recesses of long forgotten inside jokes and pulled out a comment that was relevant to absolutely nobody, barely even to me. There is a verse in the Bible that talks about a man who sees his reflection in a mirror and when he walks away, he immediately forgets what he looks like. Years ago Mike joked that this verse was for me because I always have such a hard time sticking with the decisions I make. Then we had babies and all normal conversation was wiped from our minds. Our conversation that night, though, took me back to that long forgotten time, and I was reminded by Mike's indecision that we had a joke about that. So, without explaining my mental gymnastics, what I said to his, "I am like a man blown in the wind," was, "Have you seen yourself  in the mirror lately?" I understand, looking back on it now, there is no way to take that comment except as a fat joke. Which he did. "Are you saying that if I looked at myself in a mirror I would know that I am way too huge to be blown by the wind?"

That is when I pretended to be asleep.