It’s quiet in our house.
Our 20-year-old daughter, Emma, is away for the weekend, and my wife just left to drive to some store somewhere for some big sale.
I probably should know the name of the store, where it is located and what sort of sale is being conducted, but I don’t care.
As I’ve said before, when you get to a certain age and you don’t care about something, you don’t have to pretend.
When you’re younger and don’t care about something, you have to pretend to care. When I was newly married, my wife would come home from shopping and proceed to tell me about all her great buys, I had to pretend to care even though I didn’t.
Seriously, who cares about someone else’s shopping experience?
But when you’re young and newly married, you can’t say, “I’m sorry, you must have me confused with someone who gives a (pick your own bad word here) about your shopping experience.”
When you get to a certain age, you have the right not to care, and I don’t care where my wife went shopping or what was on sale there.
I like it when it’s quiet in our house. Right now, there are two cats sleeping on the couch in our family room, and the other cat is asleep on the couch in our living room. Shilo, our 12-year-old German shepherd, is asleep by the breezeway door in our kitchen, and Caicos, our assistant dog, is likely asleep upstairs on Emma’s bed.
Whenever Emma leaves our house, Caicos spends the first few days sleeping on Emma’s bed. It’s hard to tell with dogs, but I assume the reason Caicos sleeps on Emma’s bed is because she misses her.
That’s my assumption anyway.
I have six brothers and sisters, so when I was a kid, quiet was tough to come by. My dad was in the military, and many times we lived on military bases. Most of the time the homes we lived in on those bases were not meant for a family of seven kids. What that meant was my three brothers and I would have to share a bedroom meant for two.
Look, I like my brothers well enough and I’m sure they like me well enough, but we didn’t like each other well enough to share a bedroom meant for two.
When I was a kid, I used to dream of living by myself. I used to dream of having a place where I could be alone, a place where I could read or watch whatever I wanted to on TV or just sit quietly doing nothing.
I’ve always been sort of a lazy dreamer.
My wife is not a fan of quiet, but Emma is. Emma and I can sit somewhere and say nothing to each other and still have a great time.
The other day, the three of us were on our way to Kansas City. Emma was in the back seat reading and listening to music through headphones. I was driving and trying to listen to Jimmy Buffett’s radio station. The reason I was “trying” to listen to Jimmy’s station was because my wife was next to me scrolling through Facebook on her phone and telling me about — well, I’m not sure what she was telling me about, but whatever it was I didn’t care.
But something told me that I shouldn’t say that I didn’t care what my wife was talking about, so I had to pretend to listen to whatever it was she was saying while still trying to listen to Jimmy’s radio station.
Sigh.
Did I mention it’s quiet in our house?
Here’s the bonus track: On Saturday, when my wife came home from what I know now was a place called #Vintage Vogue in Carl Junction, she proceeded to lay all of her bags on the couch in our family room. Then she said, “You won’t believe how much money I saved”. Then she took each item out and said “How much do you think I paid for this?” and I said “I don’t care” then she said “Be serious,” and I said “I am being serious” then she made me care anyway and when I said “$1” she would say “No, be serious” so then I said “$1 million” and she said “No,” she said something like “Normally, this is $500 I got it for $3” or something like that. She did this for 30 minutes. Then, on Sunday, she was still looking at price tags to compare what she paid and what the item normally cost and continued telling me about her entire shopping experience.
Double sigh. I did mention that I like it when it’s quiet in our house, didn’t I?