My husband and I were out to dinner with another couple when the soup course arrived.
“This is too salty,” said my friend.
“Well, mine’s not salty enough,” said her husband.
“Mine’s too spicy,” I chimed in.
“And mine’s too bland,” said my husband. “I’ve got an idea — let’s all switch.” Alas, most of the soup was on the tablecloth before everyone was happy.
If you were to judge by the dinnertime conversation, it had been a disastrous week: the weather was awful; business was slow, except for when customers all called at once; and the parking meters had stopped taking quarters!
Worst of all, my friend said, “I’m freezing! There’s a cold draft right down the back of my neck!”
“I can barely hear you, dear— The music here is way too loud.”
And, “Ouch! Sweetie, you just banged into my sore knee.”
Then my friend turned to my husband and said, “You’ve been awfully quiet; don’t you have anything to say?”
“Twenty-eight…twenty-nine….Ah, that does it. I just want to tell Judy that she’s about to break her all-time record with 30 complaints in 29 minutes.”
“You make it sound like such a lot.”
“I’ll just say that if we had an HVAC company, we could make a fortune.”
“What?” Our friends were puzzled. “You want to start a business in air conditioning?”
“Sort of,” I explained. “His version stands for High-volume Venting And Complaining. But enough about me. Don’t you have anything you want to complain about?” I teased him.
“What would be the point?” my beloved replied. “It won’t change anything. Besides, I find it’s better if we stick to Bedlam’s Rule.”
“Which is?” “One complainer in a couple is enough. When there’s two, you’re just fighting for air time.”
My friend’s husband started laughing so suddenly, he almost spat out his sip of water.
“Hey, is that a complaint?” I asked my spouse, a little sharply. “Because if it is, you’ve broken your own rule!”
“It’s just an observation, honey. You know I love everything about you.”
“Hmmmph,” I said. My friend said, “I think this calls for some wine.”
I grew thoughtful. “Remember how it used to be the children with all the complaints? ‘The scrambled eggs are too runny!’ ”
“The pancakes are burnt!”
“The milk made my cereal soggy!”
“The foods on my plate are touching!”
“My socks are too itchy!” Everyone turned to look at me. “Okay, so that was me, when I was a kid. But you know I’ve been a model of good humor ever since.”
“Mmm hmm,” said my spouse. “What about all the times you point to something in the house and say ‘This can’t go here!’?”
“Well, it can’t! That’s not a complaint. It’s an observation! I only say that whenever I have tripped over something left out on the floor!”
“Okay, but what happens when I ‘observe’ that the house is too warm, or someone has turned the captions off, on the TV, or lost the TV remote?”
“I say ‘Live with it! It hasn’t changed for 30 years, it’s not about to change now!’ Well, except for that captions one — we didn’t used to need them.”
“And that’s another thing — what good does it do to complain about getting older? What’s the alternative, what’s the fix for that?”
We all thought for a minute.
“I think the only cure is dessert,” I volunteered.
Thanks to the wine, we managed to endure the arrival of desserts without further complaint, even though one spoon was dirty, two people needed their water glasses filled, and the cream that arrived with the coffee was milk instead of half-and-half.
“About getting older,” I said with my last bite of carrot cake, “I guess I just want someone to say ‘Yeah, that sucks.’ ”
“Or ‘You’re as beautiful as the day we met,’ ” said my friend, looking at her husband.
“And it wouldn’t hurt to massage my feet!”
“Or to scratch my back!”
I guess this is why western civilization has mostly settled on marriages of just two people. Any more than that, and the chances are high that there will be more than one complainer… and that’s not a situation that will remain stable for long!
