Henrietta Pussycat to the Rescue

The fights during the Nashville / Jacksonville trip were epic and non-ending.

Friday fight: the way I drive (too cautiously) and the way he shrieks about it (like a Chihuahua on fire). I cried.

Saturday fight one: He listened to each Siri driving direction, then had me repeat it, then repeat it a minute later when he forgot, then scream at me to repeat it at the last minute, and then shush me as I was repeating it. I just began hissing the directions in an increasingly sarcastic loop. He finally confessed that he was having some seizure difficulty and couldn’t remember anything.

Saturday fight two: After he played the seizure card, I drove home from the concert and was directed by the traffic police to take a wrong turn. Siri led me out through the woods behind Barbara Mandrell’s mansion. Gary screamed at me to turn around so loudly that I thought the mass murderers and bears lurking in the woods would come out and tell him to shut up.

Saturday fight three: We discussed the fighting and he asked me why I was crying so much and I sobbed it was because he was screaming at me. He suggested it was because I needed more meds, or that I was going through The Change.

I then realized why I was crying so much. In our early marriage I listened to him, and any critical thing he said broke my heart. When we got separated, my heart hardened like the Pharaoh’s, and if he yelled at me I would just think, “Screw you, jackass.” The distance separated me from the drama, and that ended our separation. But now that he’s been around so much I feel closer to him again, like we’re newly married, and now I’m back to falling apart when he yells. I told him that and he dismissed it.

Sunday fight: There was no safe in the room into which we could put our valuables, and the safety deposit behind the counter was too narrow. Where shall we hide our stuff? This is the exact same fight we had on our honeymoon, only this time he didn’t throw the Bible across the hotel room.

Monday fight: He screamed at me while I was driving in an entirely new city, Jacksonville, and I cried.

Tuesday fight: He screamed at me while I was driving because I waited for the oncoming traffic to pass, when I could have made it before the oncoming traffic T-boned the rental car. I screamed back, “Stop BARKING at me!”

Barking was a good choice for two reasons.

1. An hour later in the midst of the funeral mass, I remembered my ring tone for unwanted calls is a barking dog. I turned off my cell, in case I’d get a sales call from Norwegian Cruise Lines during the funeral.

2. Gary keyed in on the word “barking” and decided to start meowing instead, in the style of Henrietta Pussycat, Mr. Roger’s friend from the neighborhood.

(If Henrietta’s voice isn’t part of your inner child monologue, I direct you to this page.)

So, later on when he wanted to scream while I was driving, he just said, “meow meow MEOW meow!” He CHOSE to not scream. (No. You just don’t know. This is a breakthrough.)

On the drive home from Nashville, he said, “You know you’re driving too slowly when trucks are passing you.”

I sighed.

“Meow meowmeow. Meow.” Then it was all better. The healing power of Henrietta Pussycat.

Of course, the best part of the drive home was the truck. A truck did indeed pass us, and I slowed to three car lengths away because of the S_______’s fear of trucks.

That’s where I was when the truck tire blew out. BOOM! I was transfixed watching the tire parts fly about. Gary screamed, “GET. AWAY. FROM. THE. TRUCK.”

“That was helpful,” I said, once I got in the next lane over. “That was worth a scream.”

“Meow MEOW!”