A Look on the Lighter Side: Family dialogue can be a mindfield for faint of heart

Judy Epstein

Communicating with your nearest and dearest can be tricky at the best of times. For instance, one of my boys got very upset years ago when he thought I had threatened someone with a beating.

“Mommy, who are you going to beat up here?” he asked in a tremulous voice.

“No one!” I answered. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

It eventually turned out that he’d overheard me talking politics with a friend. “We might lose the Senate,” I had apparently said, “but we’ll definitely beat them in the House.”

It isn’t just me, confusion is everywhere. A friend told me that recently, with so many college graduates and world travelers home from school, she and her husband had called a family meeting.

“We’re going to need some more rules,” she told them. “From now on, everyone has to be sure to leave the shower curtain open, so it doesn’t get moldy.”

“You mean closed,” said her son.

“No, I mean open,” she said. “Closed is how it gets moldy.”

“But that’s exactly why you should want it closed — so that it doesn’t,” he responded.

This continued until one of the other children noticed that although the words sounded diametrically opposed, both mother and son were miming the same gesture for what should happen to the shower curtain — namely, two hands starting together but ending up far apart.

“You both mean the same thing,” she exclaimed. “You’re just saying it differently. You, Mom, mean the curtain itself gets opened out, while my brother means that anyone looking at it from outside the shower would think the shower area is closed off.”

“Exactly!” Mother and son said, together.

Thank goodness they solved that one.

Misunderstandings can even happen out of thin air. I was driving one of my boys somewhere, when he was old enough to sit in the front seat — say, 14 — but not yet old enough to drive. We came to an intersection where a left turn would bring us to a traffic light that seemed always to be red. So I turned right, planning to go the long way around the block and avoid it. But the move puzzled my son, who knew that our ultimate destination lay to the left. “Why are you going this way?” he asked me.

“To avoid the light,” I replied.

Puzzled, he looked up at the cloudless sky. “Um, how, exactly, is that supposed to work?”

It took me several days to figure out that it seemed to him as if his crazy mother was planning to outwit the sun.

Eventually, this boy went to college and was finally about to graduate. His university, in its infinite wisdom, announced that commencement would be held in its open-air football stadium…come rain, shine or thunderstorm.

I packed for the worst: three ponchos, two umbrellas, two binoculars, and one waterproof portfolio for the diploma. The only thing that would carry it all was a college backpack.

It made perfect sense to me, but it did not impress the guard at the stadium entrance. “No backpacks,” she barked.

“There was nothing from the university about backpacks,” I protested. “It just said ’stadium attire.’ I only need this because of the rain. Here, see for yourself.” And I unzipped every zipper, opened every compartment and gave a guided tour of everything inside.

The guard was adamant. “No backpacks,” she snapped again.

“Then what am I supposed to do with it?” I wailed.

“You’ll have to check it,” she said.“Over there.” She waved her hand, away from the stadium, toward the whole rest of the campus.

“No can do,” I said. I was afraid that if I wandered off in search of the mythical bag check, I might miss my child’s entire graduation… which wasn’t an option. On the other hand, I am no longer young enough for sprinting nimbly past stadium guards, so I stood rooted to the spot.

Finally, someone came to their senses and let me in — bag and all.

But recounting this story later, to the newly minted graduate, he had only one question for me.

“Why didn’t you just let them check the bag?” he asked.

Boom! Twenty-five minutes later I was still in mid-rant about why I couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t “just check the bag,” when it became clear he thought I had simply refused to let the guard look into it.

“If only!” I said, and ranted on.

It would have been easier to avoid the light.

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