Monday, October 14, 2013

Dealing with your spouse's flaws

I figure since it's our thirteenth anniversary, I should take a few minutes to tell on my wife.

First, I have to divulge something about myself. I am horrible with names. I mean really horrible. Like someone from work will walk by - someone I see and interact with daily, and they will say "Hi Ed", and in that moment, I cannot for the life of me recall their name.

Once at church as a youth, the Bishop stopped me and asked "Where is David?".

I thought to myself, "Why is the Bishop asking me about David? Do I even know anyone named David?"

After a pause, he asked "Is your Brother here?". Oh, yes, of course, 'David' is my brother's name...

I don't know what it is exactly, but for some reason, names are groups of letters to me, and people are faces, and events, and the two don't have a very solid mapping in my mind. (Actually, I saw a video a few days back titles what English sounds like to foreigners [I won't  link it because it contains profanity at the end. It pretty easy to find it if you want, and if you exit right when she comes back into the room with the cake, you can skip the profanity.]. And as I watched it, I had a sort of epiphany. That is kind of what English sounds like to me. When people talk, I don't seem to process it in a normal way. It's like I catch the words, but out of order, so I end up having to take a few moments to process the words, re-piece them together, so I can understand what was meant. Anybody else have that problem? But I digress...).

So anyway, I have this problem with names, and I find it very embarrassing, so I generally try to cover it up. I feel awful when I can't remember someone's name. I am always afraid of hurting their feelings.

Enter my wife. I may have sort of vaguely mentioned this problem of mine to her at one point, I really don't recall. I do recall however, a number of times at social gatherings, when she would whisper the name of an approaching person to me. And when we would run into old friends of mine who she didn't know, she would often intervene by introducing herself.

I am very appreciative of the way my wife deals with this flaw of mine. She is truly amazing.

Happy Anniversary Tennille, Love you.

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