I was listening; I just didn’t really hear what my wife said
January 29, 2015
I’m not sure if other husbands share my problem but, occasionally, what my wife says doesn’t register with me right away. I want to chalk it up to being busy or thinking about other things, but, in reality, I think I just may be a little slow.
Of course, I’ll admit that my wife has a way of not conveying the true impact of certain things by just dropping them in a conversation in such a way that they seem almost irrelevant. Generally, later, when I’m driving down the highway, the true importance will dawn on me.
Usually her tidbits have to do with a bull report or some industry trend she’s noticing, but the latest was about my daughter. I’m not blind; I’ve seen my little girl grow up. In those rare moments when a dad is truly rational when it comes to his daughter I can say I’m very proud of the young lady she’s becoming.
However, somebody forgot to tell me how fast my little girl is transforming into a young lady. My only excuse is that I thought girls were supposed to start slamming doors and screaming “I hate you” as a warning that things were changing. Of course, those days may yet be ahead of me, but that’s how I explain being so clueless.
So, I’m driving down the road when it dawns on me that my wife had casually mentioned something about my daughter having a date, and I’m not talking about one on a calendar. Once the full realization hit me, I found myself thinking of ways to put the fear of God in this young man who had the temerity to ask out my daughter. For some reason, I now have a strong urge to start lifting weights, an idea I haven’t seriously entertained since college.
I want to be angry, but my being unaware of this evolving situation is my own fault. In hindsight, there were quite a few utterances whose significance I failed to grasp. So I’m adopting a new strategy: after every phone call, conversation, or text I receive, I’m going to ask myself, “Okay, what did they really say?”
It isn’t like I can’t learn from my mistakes. And to anyone who I previously failed in this regard, I want to say that it isn’t that I wasn’t listening, but simply that I didn’t really hear you.
The opinions of Troy Marshall are not necessarily those of beefmagazine.com and the Penton Agriculture Group.
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