It's Just that You're Such an ...

I bet everyone knows about that internet 'glossary' for what women mean when they say certain things to their men.  Like when we say ‘Fine’ and it means ‘we're done talking now and you should shut up.’  Or when you ask us what’s wrong and we sigh and say ‘Nothing’ and really what we mean is 'It’s just that you’re such an asshole.’ Well, in my house we don’t have that. In my house we have one brightly chirping saint and one lumpish mammal resisting all chirps.Example: Every morning I tell Old Dave how great he looks. “Blue is your color! “ I gaily call, or  “Who would have thought you’d have such wonderful silver hair!” and so on. He just gives me this level gaze and goes on tucking in his Polo shirt. It’s like he doesn’t believe me. Or doesn’t believe that I believe me. Or doesn’t want to be yet another recipient of my Ministry of General Chirpiness.He has a million Polo shirts by the way, all given to him by companies hoping to do business with the company he works for. He hasn’t bought a shirt of his own since 1993 – and yesterday morning here he was unwrapping his latest free one before putting it on. We were in the bedroom where I was simultaneously returning phone calls, ironing and affirming the houseplants.“That shirt’s kind of BIG isn’t it ?” I innocently asked and got the deadpan gaze again – only this time he didn’t look away. “But oh yeah!” I quickly add. “I guess you always tuck IN your shirts, don’t you? I guess it’s ME who has stopped tucking in shirts!”“You know it makes me wonder how I ever got dressed at all without you in my life,” he suddenly said. As if he could really remember back that far, I think to myself, he who couldn't tell you the names of his childhood pets if you drove hot toothpicks under his nails.But the remark did get my attention and made me see myself; made me flash on the many times I looked at one or another of our hapless kids and said, “Is that what you’re wearing?”I felt a tad remorseful, so went for the amend.Sort of.“What’s wrong?”I said in my relentless female hunt-you-down-in-your-cave  way.“Nothing,” he said with an airy sigh.And never mind that the genders were reversed I’m pretty sure I knew exactly what sentence he was leaving out. It looks like men really are from Mars and women from Venus. And what  Oscar Wilde said about Great Britain and the U.S applies to the genders as well: we're two countries divided by a common language.