I haven’t written about me and Middle in awhile. If I’m going to flip my lid, he’s usually the one to witness the outburst. A former me may have said he’s usually the one to cause the outburst, but poco a poco this old dog is learning new tricks. I pile brag upon brag sharing that earlier this week, after receiving news that left me deflated, defeated and a little mad, I was driving to the designated pick up spot after school and could tell from 100 yards away that Mr. Middle was in a state. I glanced at my phone, accidentally left in do-not-disturb mode and saw that I’d missed a number of calls and a couple of texts asking where I was. Whoopsie, communication failure in the I’ll be 20 minutes late department. I’m not sure how the message wires got crossed, but boy was he bent out of shape. And so was I.
However…
Instead of pretending like I wasn’t, or pretending like I couldn’t tell that he was and going on with my normal “how was your day?” routine, instead of silently scolding myself for not communicating well or scolding him out loud for not listening, I simply let us both be mad. We drove a few miles in complete silence.
And it was fine.
We made our way without a word until a big purple jeep pulled out in front of us. A big purple jeep with a giant peace sign and plates that read NAMASTE. The sighting was enough to pull Mr. Middle out of his funk. He came to life urging me to speed up, wanting to see who was driving the vehicle, which of course I did because who doesn’t want to take a peek at the person driving a lovefest-mobile?
Without a word, our quarrel was over. Our partnership re-established.
I have a feeling that for this “pays to be quiet” lesson to really take hold, I may have to practice it a time or twenty.