What was that you said?

I wrote this yesterday, intending to post it yesterday, but one thing led to another, and here it is at the end of Thursday, but we will just pretend it is still Wednesday so I don't have to rewrite the whole thing. I have a hard enough time as it is.

We arrive very early for lunch at the pizza place, and we are the only ones there. We are in the midst of eating our  salads, Richard starts to talk. I look up at him to acknowledge his comment. I watch his mouth moving, and he makes words and finishes his statement, and I realize I did not understand one thing that he has said.

This reminds me of the hilarious scene in the C.S. Lewis novel That Hideous Strength where everyone at the banquet begins speaking gibberish.

I begin to laugh. And the more I think about it the harder I laugh. As I said, no one else has arrived for lunch, which is fortunate. Heads tend to turn when I start to laugh.

I finally get control of myself and wipe my streaming eyes. I explain that I did not understand a thing he said and would he please say it again.

He did.

We used to eat at the restaurant every Wednesday because we liked the lunch special, as did another woman who would arrive on her large motorcycle with her small granddaughter who was strapped into a child seat behind her. She was a very interesting woman. He wondered if she would come to the restaurant today.

We discuss her for a few minutes. In the intervening years another granddaughter was born and she could not mange two young children on the motorcycle, so I said she probably would not come on the motorcycle. I was right. She did not come to the restaurant.

Silence breaks out and we continue to eat, and a few minutes later he begins to talk again.

One again I look up at him to acknowledge that he is talking, and the only word I hear clearly is “plate.”

Again I begin to laugh, even harder this time, if that were possible. I eat much slower than he does, and I have just finished the plate of vegetables that I got from the salad bar, the small carrots are the last things I am eating.

He has said that he wanted to have carrots but there was no room for them on his plate.

Our personal pan pizzas arrive, and we discuss a few other things as we continue to eat. Once again conversation stops as we chew our food.

A few minutes later I hear a string of gibberish and the word “glass.”

I look up at him in incredulity. Before I can say anything, he starts to laugh. 

I did that on purpose he says. I couldn’t resist, it was a perfect set up.

Well, what did you say, I asked

He begins to laugh even harder: Mumble, mumble, glass.

As I was sitting there looking at this man I have been married too since 1971, I think about the things that endear him to me, the things that I value in him and right at the top of the list is that he enjoys teasing me and wanting to make me laugh.