Tonight was our end of quarter celebration dinner at Dinosaur Barbecue, where we feasted on pulled pork, brisket, ribs, Mac-and-cheese, among other delectable artery-clogging delights. And as these events always go, I end up hearing extremely random anecdotes where I am left with question marks in my head afterwards.
A colleague of mine, who is pretty much a creature of habit, a homebody who, in theory, likes travel, but in practice, actually really hates it (for a three day trip, she thinks she should pack at leas 6-8 outfits because… how will she know what she feels like wearing on any given day of the trip when she wakes up?), mentioned to me that when she and her husband are having fights, usually after having a bit to drink, Chris and I often come up as a heated point of contention.
“What?” I asked, quizzically.
“Well, the two of you lead such an exciting life!” my colleague exclaimed. “You two are always traveling all over the world all the time that I cannot even keep track of where you are! And (husband) and I — what do we do? We just stay home, fixing things in our house. We don’t go anywhere! We don’t see anything! We haven’t seen any of the world!” (If it was not already clear, she was a bit buzzed).
She continued. “So I told him, “Yvonne! You met Yvonne! Yvonne and her husband travel and see the world! They know the world! We don’t know anything of the world! I want us to do that! Why don’t you ever want to take me anywhere? EVER? We are so boring compared to them!”
I gently reminded my colleague that she hates packing, she always complains when she takes work trips, and she doesn’t like being outside of her comfort zone, so I don’t really think she wants to travel the way Chris and I do. She laughed and said it was probably true, but she wanted to do different things (in theory, again), but her husband didn’t want to. And they were always drunkenly yelling at each other to the point of saying they would leave each other, but then they realize at the end of the day that they have no clue what they’d do without each other and make up. Then, a week or so later, it starts all over again.
How romantic. And how very functional.