If you read this blog with any sort of regularity you may have a false impression of what J is really like. This struck me as I was talking with her earlier today about how I have nothing to blog about recently because nothing funny has happened. In thinking about the sort of stories I usually tell I realized that I must give the impression that she is the stony faced foil to my hilarious antics with the boys. If you only read my side of the story and didn't actually live in our house, you would think that she only ever sets me up for hilarious one-liners and shakes her head in reluctant amusement at the clever jokes I enjoy with James.
This is actually not true at all. She has a great sense of humor and a quick wit. But I write the blogs, so she gets shortchanged. Part of this is a stylistic issue. She specializes in certain types of physical humor for which I have no talent. Like Mr. Bean, she can contort her face into an inexpressible paroxysm of disgust or pleasure at the drop of the hat, and then immediately resume a straight face a moment later. This is hilarious in the moment, but hard to write about afterwards in a manner that does justice to the timing and effect of the joke. She can also roll and cross her eyes in almost any direction, which is course one of the many qualities that make her such an exemplary parent.
Aside from physical humor she is also quick to craft countless jokes for the boys which go unappreciated by everyone except herself and occasionally me. For example, when cutting up James' lunchtime sandwich she'll ask him every day how he wants it cut. He must think her powers of memory to be particularly feeble since she asks him almost every day whether he would like his ham and cheese to be cut into triangles or rectangles, and then to question him whether he's SURE he wouldn't like rectangles because that was what she thought he liked. (He grows horribly flustered and nearly cries every time.)
I've been particularly appreciative of her non-verbal humor today. While overhearing a particularly unsuccessful attempt at a Bach minuet during one of her Mom's violin lessons earlier her eyes nearly crossed places as her pinky finger lunged over an imaginary fingerboard closer in the frantic search for intonation. When a family friend stopped by to chat and made a pleasant offhand remark about how time and advancing age improve one's tolerance for their spouse's annoying habits she turned back towards me with an unrepeatable look of mixed despair and disdain that nearly caused me to snort in my coffee.
No description of her physical humor would be complete, however, without mentioning her hilarious recurring joke of sliding an ice cold hand under my shirt and onto my bare back. I know that she is perpetually cold during these winter months, but I can admire the fortitude with which she bears this trouble since she always seems to have a cat-like grin when I whip around with a squawk of surprise.
As you can imagine, it's hard to capture her true humor in the usual course of my stories and anecdotes about our life with our children. A photo of her crossing her eyes at James would not to her justice, in addition to the fact that she would not let me actually post it. But even if it's hard to capture in words, I do appreciate on a daily basis her ability to make me laugh, especially on days like today when I want to stay in her good graces because she looks, as I texted her earlier, "real hoot."
She's a good-looking owl.
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