By Steve Gibbs

I APOLOGIZE FOR THAT TITLE. It was my wife’s suggestion. Everyone knows I always follow all my wife’s suggestions. For example last night, when she said around 6 p.m. while trying to watch the news with me in the room informing her about floaters in my left eye and trying to drive home from Kaiser with dilated pupils, and stopping for catfish, “Honey, why don’t you go lie down for a while and put a cold compress on your tired eyes. It might help your floaters.”

Or the previous night when she was trying to grade papers and I was informing her about how the right flipper of my new pinball machine was making a funny sound and the repairman couldn’t come for a week until after Dixon’s Pin-A-Go-Go pinball convention going on right now that I’m probably at already no matter how early on Sunday morning you read your newspaper.

Actually, he offered to come right over, but I told him not to bother until more things broke on my 35-year-old machine. I wanted to play, play, play and wear the machine out within my one-year warrantee, so I told him to wait a week in case something else went south. Lucky I did that, too, because I broke off the drop target for my Jack of Hearts and two lights burned out a few days later. Now he has three things to fix. I’m happy.

I was explaining all that to Susan, but for some reason she didn’t seem that interested. She said, “Honey, why don’t you go play Joker Poker some more even with one flipper. Maybe you’ll be lucky and break something else.”

Or the previous night when she was trying to relax and prepare snacks for watching the latest episode of “Game of Thrones” while I was trying to explain to her how my cities in SimCity were all working well together and that there was nothing for me to do except sit there and watch them run. I was conjecturing on what I could do to stir things up like build a row of casinos across the street from my university to see if the educated Sims would gamble.

For some reason, Susan didn’t care that much about SimCity either and didn’t even offer suggestions on where I could build my wastewater treatment plant. She said, “Honey, why don’t you go watch some of those hour-long SimCity tutorial videos you told me about. Maybe they will inspire you.”

Or the previous night when I began to extrapolate on what the two of us could do together all day long together every single day together in retirement. She gave me what I would call a frightened look. Her eyebrows were approaching her hairline and I could see the fleshy parts around her perfectly circular eyeballs. She stared at me like I was “The Ring” movie.

I was making great suggestions about traveling to pinball conventions and popular diners around America, and perhaps buying a camping trailer or a sports car or a truck or a hybrid of some sort or a motorcycle or some bicycles.

She said, “Honey. Honey! Relax! It’s two years away. First, I get one year retired before you. You will go to work all day while I will stay at home alone. I want to focus on that part of our lives together. I will need that year to prepare for your retirement and our wonderful life together.” With that, she cupped my ears in her palms and kissed me fully. Then she said, “Why don’t you go finish that new Michael Pollan book ‘Cooked’ that you ordered from Amazon so you can tell me all about it?”

Then just this morning, I was trying to explain to her over our morning coffee how I needed a Drummer topic for this week and that maybe I should write about how my pinball machine is on the fritz, my SimCity game is basically finished, and I have too much spare time and energy on my hands and don’t know what to do with myself. Maybe I should write about what sort of thoughts go through my head when I’m alone and don’t have Susan to bounce ideas off. When I said that, she really perked up. She got a bright smile on her face and nodded approval. “Honey, that is a good idea. I like that topic — things that go through your head when I’m not around to listen to them. Why don’t you go practice that now in the other room at the far end of the house?”

“But we have to get ready for school. I don’t have time to quietly reflect right now. I’m just trying to organize an approach.”

“Have you ever tried bubble mapping? Why don’t you go try that on your computer while I comb my hair, and can you please get out of the bathroom and let me do my thing here? Go call it ‘Word vomit.’”

Of course, I complied. I actually sat down and wrote this whole column while Susan was in the shower. I ran down the hall just now to tell her I had finished it and that I was about to read it aloud to her, but strangely she was already gone to school. She left much earlier than usual. She must have some copies to make or pencils to sharpen.

Steve Gibbs is a teacher at Benicia High School and has written a column for The Herald for 28 years.

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