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18211. PelleNilsson - 1/13/2006 6:11:15 PM OK, thoughtful. Here is some serious stuff.
A marriage is not a game of one-upmanship. It is not a competition about which partner can "perfect" the other. It is a never-ending process of mutual adaption where one tries to recognize, accommodate and compensate for one's partner's weaknesses and do one's best to remedy one's own. Inevitably, acrimony will occur now and then, but there is no need to seek it out. Christina and I agreed long ago to ban the expression "I told you so!".
18212. thoughtful - 1/14/2006 12:56:32 AM See you completely misunderstand.
It is NOT a competition or one-upmanship.
It IS about banning the expression "I told you so"
But the way to ban that expression is by trying to teach each other from experience so that mistakes aren't made or repeated, and errors, injury and harm are prevented.
If we didn't care, we would say nothing and let the mistakes happen and then let each other deal with the consequences of their actions. But that to me is not what marriage is about.
And in terms of placing blame, that's why we have the cat. We blame him for anything that goes wrong. He doesn't seem to mind nor care.
Of course the cat also keeps our marriage together. Neither of us want to get stuck with him.
18213. PelleNilsson - 1/14/2006 9:55:03 AM The point I'm trying to make is that if you say "I told you so" to your husband it means, to my simple mind, that you have in fact told him and that he knows you have told him. Therefore, the phrase is superfluous as a means for "teaching the other". It serves only to mark that "I was right and you were wrong", something that was already obvious and does not need to be stated explicitly (unless your husband is extraordinarily dense). 18214. Magoseph - 1/14/2006 3:22:51 PM Good morning!
If your right arm is in a cast and you’re right-handed, you find that not only can’t you open prescription bottles with safety caps, but you also have trouble putting on a tee shirt, a sweater, trousers, and tying your shoe laces.
Anyway, we spent eight hours at the hospital Thursday and yesterday we went to town and let me tell you, it was too early for us to have such a nightmarish experience. I don’t know if it‘s the result of taking a strong pain killer, but Flex seemed to have forgotten I know how to drive and I also know how to shop.
18215. judithathome - 1/14/2006 5:30:45 PM The pain killers can definitely change one's personality. But after he has no more need for them, he'll turn back into the charming sweetheart you married. ;-) 18216. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 1/14/2006 6:14:42 PM Of course the cat also keeps our marriage together. Neither of us want to get stuck with him.
Boy, can I ever relate in the getting-stuck-with-a-screwy-cat department. Also, marrying a liberal Democrat might have helped somewhat too, no?
18217. arkymalarky - 1/14/2006 6:45:24 PM I've found that hysterectomies really help. 18218. judithathome - 1/14/2006 7:25:24 PM Heh...do they ever! ;-) 18219. alistairConnor - 1/14/2006 11:09:15 PM well, I never said "I told you so".
But I got stuck with the cat anyway. 18220. jayackroyd - 1/15/2006 2:44:07 AM That phrase is one that should be banned entirely. If the person to whom it's directed doesn't realize that he or she was wrong, then saying so won't persuade him or her. OTOH, the flip side "Thanks, you were right, and I appreciate your pointing it out" (even with teeth gritted) is an improvement on the human condition.
Now, changing the subject--great first sentences in books.
The English language--so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully unwieldy, so subtle, and now in its never-ending fullness so undeniably magnificent--is in its essence a language of invasion.
That's the opening sentence of the body (there's an overwritten prologue) of Simon Winchester's book about the composition of the OED. I may be alone, but I think that's a great opening sentence. There are, famously, others:
-----
Call me Ishamael.
It was the best of times.
There was a screaming across the sky.
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan....
----
Do you have favorites?
18221. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 3:34:37 AM Here's a couple:
"He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull."
"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." 18222. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 3:46:07 AM "At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone
at five in the afternoon."
(First stanza of one of my favorite poems.) 18223. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 4:04:28 AM "NOBODY COULD SLEEP. WHEN MORNING CAME, assault craft would be lowered and a first wave of troops would ride through the surf and charge ashore on the beach at Anopopei. All over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to be dead."
First paragraph.
"The Naked and the Dead"
Norman Mailer 18224. judithathome - 1/15/2006 5:36:08 AM "Who is John Galt?" 18225. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 5:44:20 AM Here's one everybody can guess:
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I dont feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." 18226. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 5:49:41 AM Where is John Galt? 18227. judithathome - 1/15/2006 6:21:25 AM Thanks, Wonkers...where, indeed? 18228. Magoseph - 1/15/2006 10:29:37 AM Jay,
IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. 18229. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 3:28:33 PM I wish John Galt had died with Ayn Rand. Unfortunately he's replicated and alive and well in our capital. 18230. jayackroyd - 1/15/2006 5:20:32 PM Mags--I posted the same item on TPMCafe--and someone popped up with that. And--I was corrected. Pynchon is better than my memory:
A screaming comes across the sky.
is correct.
Wonk, is that Eggers?
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