Skip to main content

Whaaat?!

 


Whaaat?!

Oh yes. Calling from another room. That’s what many of us do, within our family relationships. My mother despised the ‘Calling from another room’…  As well, my husband said he didn’t like it so much. But somehow, he did not remark his disdain for it till our children were nearly teenagers, and us nearing the thirty-year mark of our marriage.

One day about six years ago, I sat and wondered, ‘When exactly did my husband start despising the Calling from another room trick? Was it after my Mom had passed? I thought more. No. My brain replied. So, it was after the turn of the century for sure. Hmmmmmm. When was it? And what was it that made it so unpalatable to him?’  I pondered. I can say I don’t really like it either. However, the excuse for the use of the Calling from another room trick. Yes, I have one.

My non-condemnation of the use of Calling from another room trick, is that… Well… with the teenagers I’m trying to give them their space. Especially, if we’ve had a heavy discussion. I want them to be alone to reflect. Or to perhaps call a friend and not have me sticking my nose further into their complaints about how tough I am as a parent. That I give them. So later at the dinner table, we can lighten the load of the same discussion without the same emotion.

I think the Calling from another room trick, was perhaps invented by a mom who either needed assistance with one child who was the youngest and wanted to make certain no other of her children were up to no good. Or calling for her husband (This is before the phone was invented, perhaps.) because the potbelly stove needed more wood to be chopped. As he had ignored her, just prior to going out with his buddies to the O.K. Corral for a few drinks.

Or it could be that the wife had joined a new knitting club four acres away, At Suzie McKinley’s home. And he’d call out when their three youngin’ ages 4,6 and 7 were out of control with a game he had invented. As he felt his wife was being silly and too tough on their children not allowing them to play pretend tied up and tortured. This was to replicate the now politically incorrect idea of enslaving another person, just because you could. I really think that is how the Calling from another room trick got started. A helpless husband misusing the Calling from another room trick. And that my friends, is why it is so now despised.

Yep. I love it when I resolve such intrinsic issues of daily family life.  And I now use the trick, Calling from another room to find out what our children (when one is not at college) want to drink with their dinner as I set the table. ---Jody-Lynn Reicher

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Completion of Humanness

Completion of Humanness As we arrive to the completion of the first year without Norman, I had decided long before he'd passed that I would continue to do things certain things he liked yet could no longer do. I decided I would not take a day off of fitness.  I would run at least for 500 days in a row. I began that in early 2020.  I'd not be concerned with the distance I'd run. It was the very thing I convinced Norman and the thing that mattered to him, from the very first discussion we had August 11th, 1981, was fitness. I loved that he was a College Boy. He loved that I was a Marine. We tickled each other's soul with such admirations. Later fitness continued as an old discussion from 1994 ...getting outside and to run no matter what. I would say to him, "Run 200 meters, then 400 meters. If it doesn't feel good, stop. Turn around and walk back home and know you did your best. That is all you can ask of yourself." I said this,  knowing he would get dow
2 comments
Read more

In My World

As I finish putting away the week's groceries, I contemplate other's lives. Aside from my two daughters,  I consider what may be other's lives.  How they have conducted their lives over the past two years.  This is a thought not unusual for me to have. Yet, it occurs more often than not. Especially  now, as the population is probably feeling ever more irked. Regarding perhaps. their illusion of any lack of their freedom. But isn't that what life is about? The illusion of who we are. What we are about. Where we stand on the planet. Who we love. And who loves us. Our significance. Couldn't we imagine if this were all just an illusion? Sounds like a "Twighlight Zone" episode, perhaps. My aim here, are the thoughts of reckoning. I'll explain why I'm claiming such a thing. For about twenty-eight years of a career in dealing with injured athletes,  pain patients, chronically ill and the terminally ill. I found that there were many people who lied to
Post a Comment
Read more

It Follows Me...

One may wonder what would inspire someone to work hard labor voluntarily. For me it’s the love of many things. It’s the passion that won’t be broken. Because there are so many aspects to such service for me, that it may seem beyond comprehension. I’d compare it to my youthful desire to enter the military as a young child. Then for a multitude of reasons only to follow through thirteen years later at age eighteen entering the Marines. There were things that followed me throughout my life. Sometimes they were questions of how I ever gave up my over decade’s life dream to become a New Jersey State Trooper. My childhood desire to never wed—to never have any serious relationships with another human being. I desired only service in military and law enforcement nearly my whole childhood. Too the extent that even one of my Marine Corps superiors expressed to me last July, “I never thought you’d ever get married. It just wasn’t who you were. You were always a loner.” I replied, “Yeah. I know.
Post a Comment
Read more