Mixed Signals

Jojo and I spent a good portion of the morning at Best Buy shopping for a Vonage VOIP router. I still don’t know exactly what it does or how it works. Jojo has surrendered trying to explain it to me and I’ve given up trying to understand it. When it comes to high tech stuff, I’ll just have to trust by techie husband.

On our way home, I was half-serious and half-teasing when I told Jojo that I would probably understand “technology” more if he could clearly describe things in lay-man’s terms, instead of his usual “techie mumbo jumbo”. Jojo (being as brilliant as he is), not only describes things using hard-to-understand terminology, (he’s mind probably works so fast), he skips stuff normal people have to go through to understand the big picture. I illustrated what I meant with a “simplified” example, I told Jojo this is would be a typical conversation I could have with him:

(Remember this a “pretend” conversation to illustrate my point!)

Joanne: Ni, I was wondering can you tell me what a “dog” is?

Jojo: Dog? The Canis lupus familiaris is a domestic subspecies of the wolf, a mammal of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora.

Joanne: What does that mean? I just asked you what a dog is and you sound like an encyclopedia!

Jojo: You asked what a dog is and I’m telling you.

Joanne: Well, what does it do, what does it look like, sound like, smell like?

Jojo: That’s oversimplifying it – there are hundreds of dog breeds that I can’t describe just one for you!

Joanne: Well, where do dogs it come from? What does it eat?

Jojo: Again, it’s not that simple. The fact that dogs should eat bones is actually not entirely accurate. Bones are not all that good for them as there are changes in the chemical and physical properties of bones so that they cannot be chewed properly, also they splinter into jagged shards, and are really bad for a dog’s digestion.

Joanne: Who said anything about bones? I didn’t even know about bones! All I wanted to know what what a dog is!?

That is a typical conversation in our household … you would just have to substitute the word “dog” for words like torrent file, modem router, thingamajiggy, etc, etc.

Jojo countered that a conversation with me would be something like this (again, this is another “pretend” conversation):

Jojo: Hon, you know that new dog Sam got? It was pretty noisy last night, huh?

Joanne: What dog?

Jojo: The one he brought over to the picnic.

Joanne: I didn’t really notice … but now that I think about it I think it was a cat.

Jojo: No way, I was looking at it and it’s clearly a dog. Besides it was on a leash. You can’t walk a cat like that.

Joanne: You certainly could. Lions … tigers … those are cats.

Jojo: Yes. But Sam’s pet was a lot smaller and housecats are not walked with a leash around their necks.

Joanne: Whatever. I think it’s cute and cuddly.

Jojo: Yes, it is … all I’m saying is it’s a pretty noisy dog.

Joanne: Actually I still think it’s a cat.

Jojo: Hon, it’s a dog. I asked Sam and he told me it’s a dog.

Joanne: Yeah? Well, I knew it was a dog all along!

With conversations like these, it’s no wonder our marriage is anything but boring!