My grandmother and grandfather enjoyed decades of marital bliss until he died in 1991. My grandmother lives to this day and now is past 90! I believe one of the secrets for their marital success was due to my grandfather being a little deaf, or deef, as one would say in Sampson County, North Carolina. Here in Costa Rica one would call that being “sordo” and if you add an inability to express yourself adequately on top of that, “sordomudo.” Well truth be told, I believe grandaddy could hear just fine….when he wanted to. I am blessed with the same advantage down here in Costa Rica, but for an entirely different reason. Lily, being from Colombia, does not speak a word of king’s English. Truth be told, my Spanish ain’t that bad, but as a gringo, I can always feign not being able to understand. Sometimes, it’s because I am just too darn tired to muster up the mental acuity necessary to communicate in a non-native language. It does tend to tax the cerebrum. Other times, my “inability to communicate” is entirely strategic and I have my grandaddy to thank for that ingenious tactic. For instance, if she is really upset about something, and when she is in this state the pace of her enunciations seems to go from 60 to warp speed 5, I can just shake my head and say, always with a bewildered look on my face, “huh.” She may repeat herself once, but upon the next huh, she retreats in exasperation (usually muttering to herself in disgust “este gringo no intiende nada”). Argument over! See it works like a charm every time and she can’t blame me because, after all, I’m gringo and not supposed to be able to understand all that cascading Colombian Castellano. Secretly I am feverishly trying to reach the level of fluidity, but I will never let her know that! Thanks grandaddy for teaching me this little secret to marital bliss….a feigned physical, or in my case, mental, inability to communicate. But caution, don’t try this at home without the advantage of either deafness, or like me, dumb-ness, because it could backfire on you. Your spouse will demand an adequate level of communication, unless you can play to her pity and receive a pass for some real or imagined impediment. Just a little marital advice from Costa Rica guy.
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