Support Group

Sam and I live in China, which means I rarely know what’s going on.

My phone will ring and I’ll answer it, saying, “Nǐhǎo,” (hello) then someone will say a lot of Chinese words.

Once they stop talking, I’ll say, “Xièxie” (thank you) and hang up.

The first time Sam saw me do it, his jaw dropped. “Do you know what they just said?” he asked.

“Not a clue,” I responded. “But if I don’t answer, they keep calling and calling, so I’ve started doing this.”

I want everyone to understand that, in my world, this is no problem. It causes me not one iota of discomfort to answer a phone, have someone say things in a foreign language, then hang up without knowing what they said.

I’d prefer not to answer at all, but the persistence of callers here is just wild. Usually, it’s a delivery driver saying they’ve put my package downstairs. 17 calls, bruv? I’m trying to listen to Spotify here and my song stops EVERY TIME you call.

Sam would never, in a million years, function this way. When someone has information for him, he wants to know what that information is.

Me? I’d rather just end the barrage of calls so I can listen to my music in peace.

Yesterday, while we were out getting massages, we learned about another fun difference between us. Sam (who is way more disciplined about learning Chinese than I am) forgot how to say, “Where’s the bathroom?”

And I said, “Oh, no problem. I have a flashcard for that on my phone.”

So I opened up my app and handed it to Sam. He looked at my phone then he looked at me. 

“This card says, ‘I’m in the bathroom,’ not ‘Where is the bathroom?’”

And I said, “Yeah, that’s what my teacher taught me.”

His brow furrowed a bit as he said, “But where is your, ‘Where is the bathroom’ card?”

And I said, “Oh, I don’t have one of those.”

Then he gave me the most Sam of looks and said, “Please help me understand why you learned how to say, ‘I’m in the bathroom,’ before you learned, ‘Where is the bathroom?’ When do you ever have to say, ‘I’m in the bathroom?’”

And I said, “Well, first, I haven’t learned how to say either. Second, what if a taxi driver calls to tell me he’s arrived but I’m in the bathroom?”

And Sam said, “Ah yes, of course. That ever-so-frequent use case. Far more common than needing to ask someone where the bathroom is. And how kind of you to share specifics with your taxi driver instead of just saying, ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’”

Then he shook his head a few more times before getting out his own phone to look up the translation (which, by the way, is “Xǐshǒujiān zài nǎlǐ?”).

At the end of our massage, Sam was still laughing about it.

Which is perfect, because there’s no better response than laughter when you have a partner who pretty much lives on a different planet than you.

Denyse, let Pierce know that Sam’s ready for the inaugural meeting of the “Husbands of Weirdo Wives Support Group.”

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