I'm Listening, Honey

“My wife told me I never listen to her. At least, that’s what I think she said.”

It’s a classic joke, and like all good humor, it’s funny because it’s rooted in the truth. All my life I have been hearing about wives complaining that their husbands don’t listen. When I first got married I remember thinking, “Well, that’s silly. I would never do that to my wife. Why would you choose to live the rest of your life with someone, but choose not to listen to them? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Little did I know, it all makes perfect sense. You just have to be married for a while and have kids before it starts.

Ten year into the marriage and three boys later, I totally understand, and I’m here today to tell you ladies, it’s not that we’re not listening, it’s that we’re not remembering.

I’m almost 40 years old now, and I can say with absolute certainty that my brain is much, much smaller than when I was 30. At least it feels that way. It doesn’t actually feel like it has become physically smaller and rattling around inside my skull, it just feels like it cannot hold and process near as much information as before. It’s not necessarily slower, it just has less capacity.

I think it has been filled up with questions. When you have small kids, approximately 78% of your day is devoted to answering questions. This tax on your brain is exacerbated by the fact that your average day is now 78% busier than it used to be, specifically because of the kids. That’s the double-edged sword of child rearing from a brain capacity standpoint. Your brain is now doing approximately 156% more work than it did before you had kids.

Even though your brain is being heavily taxed at home by your children and your schedule, if you’re the dad with the job, you still have to go to work and earn a living. Unfortunately, even though you want to, you can’t just go into the office and stare at the wall and drool, like your brain wants you to do. You have to be at least a little bit productive or they are likely to stop paying you.

So with a brain going full-tilt nearly 18 hours a day, you tend to do information triage on all the incoming data. This is where the wives tend to mistake the husbands’ lack of recall for lack of listening in the first place. I can assure you ladies, we listened to everything you just told us, it’s just that we only retained the information that required our later action.

Allow me to explain with this totally hypothetical situation that happened last week:

My wife sits me down after the kids go to bed and tells me four things:

Wife’s information packet number 1:

We’re going somewhere on Wednesday night after you get home from work. We’ll leave from home.

My brain’s processing of that information:

She will tell me what to wear when I get home from work on whatever night that she just said, and then she’ll tell me where to drive the car. No action required on my part. No need to store this information. Immediately forgotten.

Wife’s information packet number 2:

We’re having some of our friends over for dinner on Friday night. They will arrive at our house after you get home from work. I am making food.

My brain’s processing of that information:

Do we have beer in the garage fridge? Yes. OK. Husbands and I are all set. She will tell me what to wear when I get home from work on whatever night that she just said. No action required on my part. No need to store this information. Immediately forgotten.

Wife’s information packet number 3:

The boys have back-to-back baseball games on Saturday. We’ll all go to the fields in the morning in two separate cars, and then after Son Number Two’s game, you will stay to watch Son Number One’s game with Son Number Two and I will take Son Number Three home for his nap. You will bring Number One and Two home after the second game.

My brain’s processing of that information:

She will tell me what to wear when I wake up on whatever morning she just said, and she’ll tell me where to drive the car. No action required on my part. No need to store this information. Immediately forgotten.

Wife’s information packet number 4:

The guest bathroom faucet is dripping.

My brain’s processing of that information:

That is the lever kind of mixing valve where you need to replace the plastic cartridge underneath the handle. I’ll have to turn the water off under the sink to do it, and sometimes when you do that, the seals in the shut-off valve go out on you, too. I’d better make sure I get a couple spare shut off valves along with the cartridge when I go to the hardware store. I’d also better remember to find my big shut-off wrench in the garage and have it handy before I get started in case one of the valves under the sink does start to leak and I need to shut the main water off out by the sidewalk in a hurry. I have that all-day meeting on Tuesday, but I can probably get to the hardware store Wednesday on my lunch hour and knock that out on Wednesday night.

“Do we have anything going on Wednesday night?”

“Arrrggghhhh! I just told you five minutes ago that we’re going to the Johnson’s for the piano recital. You never listen!"

I hope that little example helps you ladies out there to understand where we husbands are coming from. We’re not ignoring you. We’re just trying to use our smaller brains as efficiently as possible so we don’t forget to pick up the kids when you ask us to.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

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