"What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis?": The Communications Between a Husband and Wife

“Baby, I’m cold,”  I called to John, who was in the living room. “Could you turn down the air conditioning?”

“Sure thing, hun.”

Ten minutes later, when I got out of the shower, I was shivering even more. “John, did you turn the air down?”

“Yeah. I turned it down right when you asked me.”

“Weird, I’m so much colder. I can’t stop shivering.”

“That makes sense. I turned the air down.”

“But it should be getting warmer then.”

“No, colder. The air down means that it will get colder. You know, the temperature will go down.”

“No, the air down means warmer. It won’t blow as much cold air.”

I should have known right then that communication wasn’t going to come easy for John and me. This was only the third day of our honeymoon and we were already having issues.

Fast forward almost exactly five years.

“John, I can’t get this lighter to work.  What’s the trick?”

“Push down on the slide bar and pull back on the trigger.”

“I can’t push down on the slide bar. I can only push up on it.”

“No, you push it down. Here, I’ll show you…”

John proceeded to show me that what he meant by “push down” was exactly what I meant by “push up.” Both of us were referring to moving the slide bar forward using downward force from our thumb.

About two hours later…

“Uh-oh! I started to top of the marshmallow stick on fire!” I called over to John..

“How’d you do that,” he asked.

“I was making a mallow and it fell off and the stick started on fire.”

“So, you started the bottom of the stick on fire, not the top.”

“No, the top. You know, when you stand the stick up to put the mallow on, you’re putting it on the top.”

“Okay, but when you put the marshmallow in the fire to cook it, that end is down, making it the bottom.”

“I can see what you’re saying,” I responded, “but I still say I started the top of the stick on fire.”

“No, it was the bottom,” he answered with a grin.

Sometimes it feels like we’re living in real life version of Who’s on First? We can use the same words, in the same language, and mean totally different things. What I find even more interesting is that when we share these stories with friends, the women often understand what I mean while the men understand what John means. 

At first I really thought John was wrong. I’m sure he thought the same of me. But now we’ve come to realize that we’re both right—we just speak differently.  Luckily, we find these communication lapses pretty funny and have spent a lot of time laughing about them. Somehow, I’m pretty sure that we’ll have plenty more to laugh about over the next 50+ years…