When you’ve been married for 26 years, as I have (and to the same person I might add), you give up playing the game,

“Tell me something about yourself that I don’t know.”  At least I did.

I think we’ve told each other just about everything there is to tell.  None of his stories surprise me anymore.  But I am noticing that that’s beginning not to be absolutely true as we age together, compatibly.  Sometimes he just doesn’t remember the stories I’ve already told him.  Or maybe I’ve forgotten to tell him stuff that is just now emerging from my far distant past, memories that are now being moved to the part of my brain that deals with long term memory, as in, the memory bank old people tend to have a really firm and accurate grasp on!

I’ve been noticing that he reacts to things I tell him as if he’s never heard them before.  A simple one springs to mind, the case of the banana nut muffin.  I do not eat banana nut muffins because I do not like them.  The children know this fact, but my hubby insists on now buying me banana nut muffins as a treat.  It’s not that he forgets, it’s more that he remembers something about this particular muffin and gets mixed up with the likes and dislikes of it in reference to his bride of 26 years.  He has a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right and panics over the two pronged choice.  He snaps into “play it safe” mode and the replay button subconsciously kicks in resulting in the same choice as before.  I and the children stare in disbelief at the generously offered sweatmeat.

Well, now it seems, I’m in danger of hearing things I’ve never heard before.

Recently, on one of our first nights in Costa Rica, as he was turning out the light, faithful hubby said to me,

“I hope I dream about my father tonight.”

“Think about him before you fall asleep then you probably will,”  I suggested, in my ever helpful spouse mode.

“I do that every night and I’ve never dreamed of him, not even once.”

His father’s been dead for 36 years.  I’ve never heard this story before.  At least I don’t think I have!