# 96 LET'S BE SERIOUS

Which is more painful? Childbirth or something jabbed deep under a fingernail? This morning I know and it isn’t childbirth. I know because yesterday I scraped some hard stuff off the baseboard by the dog’s dish and ended up with a foreign object lodged well out of sight under my thumb-nail. This morning it is infected, and I am writhing in pain.

Now normally I don’t discuss my physical ailments with anyone unless they are truly severe. But when there is no other cure, a bit of sympathy can go a long way toward making one feel better. And with a thumb-nail far too sore to jab other things under there to dislodge the irritant, I simply had to conclude it was best left alone. To throb. To swell. To hurt. Nothing for it except understanding and sympathy from an outside source. So I showed Hub my painful thumb.

Now life is better when you retire and more amusing when you live with someone with a good sense of humor. But since Christmas, Hub who is normally quite silly, is even sillier. In fact, I’m certain we haven’t shared a serious moment since Dec 25th. Whenever I want to be serious, need to be serious, Hub is silly and light-hearted. In a joking mood. He calls it ‘congeniality’, I call it ‘nonsense’. It can be so bloody irritating but perhaps he is not solely to blame. Maybe there is just something about the spirit of the season or the abnormally warm weather or super-charged ions in the air that have made him into an irritating ‘smart-ass’ for lack of a better term.

Anyway this morning, while close to tears because of the excruciating pain, I showed Hub my finger. I was comforted when he donned his glasses and closely examined the redness and painful swelling and then said with a truly sympathetic tone, “Awww. That looks really sore.”

Then he laughed, actually tipped back his chair and roared while holding up his stubby thumb and waving it in the air – a thumb that is missing both tip and fingernail since an industrial accident many years ago. Now this whole move was to ‘send a message’ as the politicians would say. Not a message of ‘sympathy’, but rather a message of ‘immunity’. I stared at him in disbelief. What could I say?

“You are horse’s ass,” I said. Get that thumb out of my face and sit on it or keep it under your chair or in your pocket until mine is better!”

Now I’ve told Hub again and again in the past. “If you continue to act so silly and suddenly develop a mental problem I will not recognize the symptoms. And by the time I realize that you have a brain tumor or brain disease you will be way too far gone for any medical help.”

This morning I have to wonder, maybe I should have sought help for Hub a long time ago. Do you think?