Real-Life Dialogue: Red, Green, and White Edition

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cartoonish representations (like from a mid-20th-century advertisement) of a woman's and a man's heads; a bold, jagged dotted line seems to connect their mouths/ears... the brokenness of the line perhaps being the point

The setting: a Sunday morning in early December, in a small kitchen in a small home in a North Carolina suburb. Water is heating in a couple of electric appliances. She stands at the counter, before a cup with a spoon it, awaiting the silence from one of the appliances. Her cup is brightly colored with the hues most often associated with the month, at least in the US.

He (with a nod towards the cup): Ah. I see you’ve wasted no time getting into the Christmas spirit.

She: Why not? I’ve unpacked the whole set — you want one?

He: No, thank you. Those cups are too small.

(Her mouth drops open.)

She: Grinch!

(They turn away from each other, each smiling in secret self-satisfaction to have played their assigned roles to a T.)

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Real-Life Dialogue: Meta-Dialogue Edition

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[The setting: a Monday evening in a small apartment in North Florida, USA, in March 2021. Dinner is being prepared, mostly by Her. They are just coming off the feverish roller-coaster of symptoms common after Round 2 of the COVID-19 vaccine; they are both a little light-headed, even giddy, with relief — and with the start of their first cocktail hour in a couple of days. As usual, whatever the nominal topic, beneath the repartee is an undercurrent of adversarial good feeling: She says “[A],” for example, and he counters with “But, well, [A-Prime]…”; she replies “But [B]!,” and he ripostes with “Yes, but [B-Prime]!” They both withhold any sign of amusement, but with difficulty. Suddenly, she turns at the counter and signals for silence.]

She: You make talking about everything so difficult…!

He: And yet, you seem to have made it your primary mission in life to get me to talk more about everything—

She: (interrupting) I know! You’d think, after thirty %&*!@?! years — you’d think I’d know better by now!

[Scene dissolves in laughter.]

___________

(Note: for further reference, please visit the Wardrobe Culling Edition of this series, from 2011, and also the more recent Men Are from Illinois, Women Are from Manhattan entry, from 2016. Or, come to think of it, pretty much any of the posts in the series.)

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Real-Life Dialogue: Wardrobe Culling Edition

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[The scene: a suburban home in North Florida, USA. He has stayed home from work on this day to prepare a guest bedroom for painting. In this guest bedroom is a closet, and in the closet are His clothes. All of them. Woven shirts, knit shirts, jeans, suits, ties, socks, underwear, shoes… It’s not a particularly big closet. It makes sense, on this occasion, to go through the stuff folded or hanging in there, putting aside usable-but-old stuff for Goodwill donation, throwing away unusable-and/or-old stuff, and just generally… organizing — since He will have to completely empty the closet for painting, and then refill it when the painting’s done.]

She returns home from work.

She: Did you get a lot done?

He: Uh-huh. The bags in the hall are all trash. I’ll take ’em out in a little bit.

She goes to the guest bedroom to inspect the results. She returns, smiling.

She: Didn’t it feel good?

He: Uh…

She: You know — straightening up the clothes. Getting rid of the stuff you don’t wear anymore. It always makes me feel renewed and refreshed whenever I do that.

He: Let me put it this way: there were shirts in there that I bought before we’d ever met.

She: But that—

He: Yeah. Twenty years ago.

She: Sooo…

He: Right again. I can’t say I’ve done this often enough to recognize any patterns at all.

She: [silence]

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