Estimated reading time is 2 minutes.
I DON’T SPEND MUCH TIME on Facebook or other social media platforms. I use them to call attention to my three websites (and soon to be four). Since I spend most of my time writing thises and thats for those sites, I rarely visit the Facebook pages of my Facebook friends.
Sometimes I feel guilty about this—you know, being so goram self-absorbed, seeming like I never pay attention or never listen to anyone—so occasionally I take time and visit a friend’s page and make a bunch of comments.
Today saw me spending time on longtime friend Sharon Gayeski’s page, where I left a comment and shared a few of her posts on the Facebook pages of family and friends. Then I came across one of those ubiquitous photo-text memes that read:
Husbands are the best people
to share your secrets with.
They’ll never tell anyone because
they aren’t even listening.
Listen up! It’s an urban myth that we husbands don’t listen to our wives. Quite the opposite is true: we ALWAYS listen to our wives (and girlfriends and sisters and daughters). It’s just that we know that most of what you wanna share with us we don’t really want or need to know.
See, while you gals are steadfastly single-minded, we guys usually have at least two things going on in our heads at all times. So, when you start telling us those “important secrets,” we are listening to every single word you say! But at the same time, we’re thinking about other, truly important things:
• Who played right field for the 1980 World Champion Philadelphia Phillies?
• What was the flip-side of the Beatles’ first hit record in America?
• Was Nicole Kidman hotter as a redhead in Practical Magic than she normally is as a blond?
See, when you have things that important going on, it is easy to be distracted. But we have the uncanny ability to filter the truly meaningful stuff you’re telling us from all the things you think are important that we find, well, just plain silly.
For example, while we may never ever (ever!) remember what Janet said about Elaine’s new hairstyle or the new guy she just started seeing, we will always (always!) remember what Janet said about Elaine’s new boob job!
Just thought you gals should know this . . .
It’s just another urban myth that we husbands don’t ever listen to our wives. Click To Tweet
FEATURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page is Nicole Kidman as Gillian Owens in Practical Magic. It’s a pleasant, lightweight film with Sandra Bullock as sister Sally Owens, both sisters being witches. I darkened it and reversed the photo to make the white print of the title more readable. As for the questions above: Bake McBride, I Saw Her Standing There, and oh yeah . . .
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)