The Very Real New and Improved Me, Part 3
I had the half-altered picture from 1992 on the screen.
I also had displayed a paragraph from Part 2 of The Very Real New and Improved Me -- the monologue in response to Hemingway, who at the moment was occupying my celadon chenille-draped computer chair with the ruffled and fringed Norfolk Garden cushion on it. I breathed deeply in preparation for battle. You know what he did? He read aloud one phrase, with just the faintest tinge of sarcasm:
" ...here I lift smooth translucent silver-rimmed China teacup to tongue and lips, tip my chin to one side and muse... "
Ignoring completely the 1992 photo with the alterations that had irritated him earlier, crunching, then brushing neon orange-dusted fingers against his shirt, he said, "Do that and your tea will spill out."
The first thing I noticed was that each word he uttered, as always, was one clipped syllable. Then I realized that, in the most absurdly linear, concrete, adherence-to-dead-fact way he has of thinking, he was right.
I hate when he does that.
Perhaps I'd have allowed him to engage me in debate, but this particular discourse would have been dreary and far from impromptu -- not even extemporaneous. It was, in fact, already well scripted. And it would end, finis, where he reminded me that I failed Intro to Logic, Phil 101. In my first year of college, well before the first Apple was on the tree, much less on a desk in the living room and plugged into the wall. It did no good to remind him that I failed Phil 101 due to no error in logic of mine: This "class" met at 7:05 a.m., scarcely hours from the typical bedtime of any Journalism, Drama, or Art major I knew. The fact that the Registrar and Scheduler deemed it possible to awaken, much less think, at that hour pointed to a sad lack of logic on somebody's part, albeit not my own.
Discretion being the better part of shutting up, I did that. Eventually my husband left to chainsaw something.