Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

This Is Now
This can't be too hard.

[11/15/99]

That Was Then
Don't try the sex cure.

[11/15/99]

Goin' to the chapel
We take a week to prod and dissect, blaspheme and praise the proud and slightly threadbare institution of marriage.
By Jennifer Foote Sweeney
[11/15/99]

"Pokémon: The First Movie"
The latest kids' movie is taken on by the real critics -- five kids.
By Lisa Moskowitz
[11/12/99]

Unarmed and under fire: An oral history of female Vietnam vets
"All we had was prayer. And I did a lot of that."
By Austin Bunn
[11/11/99]

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Till death do us part Is it a promise of love or a life sentence? Our readers weigh in with advice. Doomed Marriage 1 Can cheaters be choosers? Solutions Read our lips, say readers: Open marriages don't work. Doomed Marriage 2 A joke in Ireland sends this marriage straight to hell. Solutions Kids! Cut the posturing and hostility! Doomed Marriage 3 Can your marriage survive when you can't stand the sight of his ever-widening butt lying on the couch? Solutions Buy flowers! Buy new drapes! Whither marriage? Read all the articles

The marriage started breaking down on the honeymoon, I guess it was. The bride played a joke on the groom. Nothing cruel, just a tiny practical joke. But like most timid people, David hated looking like a fool more than anything, and by the time he figured out that he would not have been required to stand and salute even if "Molly Malone" were the Irish national anthem, he already had a barful of drunken farmers laughing their Guinness-soaked heads off at him. (The pair were cycling through Ireland.)

I'm sure it was then that the seeds of his paranoia -- part and parcel of the Y-chromosome -- began to sprout.

Lucy had a kind heart, and felt bad for making David miserable. But she was an inveterate trickster, who loved to tease and tell jokes. In an attempt to shake him up, to free him from his insecurity, she tried a few more jokes on him, this time in private. But each time he found himself scraping whipped cream off his raincoat or searching in vain for a snappy comeback to one of her remarks, his irritation grew. The first time he stopped talking to Lucy, she called me, crying.

"I just wish he would laugh at himself a little," she said. But after a 30-minute monologue, during which I quietly ate a pint of ice cream, my friend argued herself to a resolution: She would stop playing practical jokes, and stop teasing David.

Whenever I was with them, I noticed that instead of enjoying Lucy's lively sense of humor, which he had once been so attracted to, David remained somber and serious. It was as if he were afraid to laugh, as if laughter would open him up to more foolish behavior. And although Lucy swore to him that she would no longer play practical jokes, his paranoia began to flower. He became obsessed with avoiding pratfalls of any kind.

These examples came directly from Lucy: If they were going to be driving in a strange city, David would insist on seeing the map and memorizing the route himself; it was as if he didn't trust her to navigate. If she told him that so-and-so had phoned, he would call that person up and first determine whether they had actually called. If Lucy made a single observation about something he said or did, no matter how innocuous, he would get defensive immediately.

And his paranoia extended beyond Lucy. Once, after returning from an airplane trip, David unpacked his suitcase and began checking off the items from a packing list he had made. He discovered that his favorite gray cardigan -- the one with the raveling hem and the coffee stain on the collar -- was missing. David instantly began a review of everyone who might have had access to his suitcase, in order to determine who had stolen it.

Next page | If she wanted to speak freely, she would seek out new company