A GOOD IDEA

One thing I’ve learned after being married for many decades is never to say ‘Hey, I’ve got a good idea!’ The ‘good idea’ of course could be anything from knocking a wall out for the purpose of adding a deck, a swimming pool and then landscaped gardens to rival Versailles, or merely going to the movies.

There’s an inbuilt male response to your good idea which is to say, ‘No’. Then you say, ‘Why not?’ and their next reply every time is ‘I-don-wanna’. So we have to use subterfuge. We’re good at subterfuge. Why we don’t even have to think about it – it just comes automatically. However, I’ll help you out on this one.What you need to do is to mention your good idea to them in general conversation – by general conversation, I mean of course the conversation you’re having ostensibly with yourself while they are reading the newspaper. You casually throw in the phrase - ‘visit great aunt Flossie’. Then no longer than forty seven and a half hours later (the measured time of a male’s retention) you suddenly say, oh so casually, ‘That was a great idea of yours the other day’.

Now, anything attributed to the male which sounds admiring or flattering will catch their attention straight away. Guaranteed! ‘What?’ they will say, being men of few words, as we know. ‘To visit great aunt Flossie’, you say, not looking at them. This is very important. Do not meet their eye. ‘What!’ the one word response will be. Then you can drop the admiring flattery, and look directly at them and say in a slightly peeved voice, ‘What’s wrong with you? We talked about this the other day, don’t you remember?’ (Which is true, after all!) From the faint recesses of their subconscious they will recall those words were spoken, sometime, somewhere, and you’ll see the doubt flicker over their face. Were they spoken by them? Surely not.

The rest of the argument is up to you. You can cajole, you can plead, you can use your feminine wiles, you can nag, you can shout, you can invoke the gods – whatever works best for you. Just keep reiterating the fact that these words were spoken, that there had been some sort of discussion about it, and that as usual they had their head in the paper, and weren’t listening to you – ‘You never do, do you?’ are the words you sadly speak here. Using the correct tone of voice should make them feel guilty – male guilt of course is a completely different thing, and warrants a discussion on its own. So I won’t digress at this point.

Now, we all know that the male species doesn’t listen, don’t we? There’s an easy test you can carry out to prove this. You say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a good idea. Lets watch the footy and have a couple of stubbies’ – (as if!). Automatically, without the words registering he’ll say ‘I-don-wanna’, and then the penny drops. It drops with a loud clunk. He’s about to close his now gaping mouth, to re-open it to re-phrase his answer, but you’ve already casually sauntered away, saying ‘Oh, alright then. No worries. Just an idea’.

Now, the opposite situation with good ideas always amazes me. You can guarantee you’re covered in grease and grime from cleaning the oven – they’ve been sitting there, doing what? Why reading the paper, that’s what. They’ll suddenly leap up, clean and fresh and raring to go, and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a good idea. Lets go to the nursery for those plants you wanted’. Now, you desperately want those plants, and you want them to go along with you, to pretend to let them help you make a choice, but mostly to carry the jolly wet punnets back to the car, and dig the holes for them. Over all your protestations that you can’t go just now – why, you’re dirty, in need of a shower, your hair is a mess, and you’ve no make up on – he will drag you to the car, and off you will go to the nursery. It won’t be a successful visit, because you’ll be cowering behind him, hoping no one you know sees you, and hoping you don’t frighten the nursery person too much when they clap eyes on you. Grease and grime covered, hair all over the place, and bare face.

I want to know why the words ‘I-don-wanna’, from the female don’t reverberate with the male. He has selective deafness – well, we all knew that – but those words just don’t even register at all. Although, when you think about it, men having a good idea is just such a rarity – and generally comes from a subliminal idea you’ve, oh so casually, instilled in that male brain anyway – we should become conditioned to say immediately ‘Oh jolly good – what a good idea’. And if it wasn’t such a good idea after all, you can always twist it around to suit you. The line to use here when you add your bit – ‘and a deck, and a swimming pool and landscaped gardens’ is something like ‘But we talked about this before – don’t you remember?‘ Now, isn’t that a good idea!

© Nelma Ward