Plastic Pocket Protector

    The pictures were being passed around a group of our friends.  As one photo in particular reached each individual, they would chuckle softly and say,”oh no, poor Tom” and then give me a surreptitious glance.  I was kind of starting to wonder what was going on.  Tom’s a nice guy; I had been at that party and had no memory of him doing anything unseemly.  Of course, the end of that evening was a bit hazy, so he may have gotten out of hand, but he is normally a fairly reserved, polite guy.  I wondered what the deal was.

    When the photo got to me it was a picture of Tom and me.  I was talking, rather animatedly, which is unusual because I am a quiet, reserved, extremely well mannered gentleman at all times, and Tom was listening very attentively.  I didn’t get it?  What was so funny?  I lifted my head; everyone was looking somewhere else, except my wife.  She had a kind of ‘sorry honey’  look on her face as she gazed at me with no small measure of pity mixed in, although in retrospect it could have been sorrow.

    I passed the photograph on, somewhat confused.  It continued to elicit laughter as it was passed among our friends.

    I must admit I was more than a little perplexed.  I intercepted the picture and looked at it again.  Hmmn, nope, my pants were zipped up.  What was so damn funny?  Later in the evening I cornered my wife and inquired what everyone was finding so humorous with that particular photographic document?

    She sighed and looked lovingly into my eyes.  “Well honey,” she started, “I think that maybe in that picture Tom might look a bit…  I don’t know… maybe a little bored?  Do you think?”

    I looked closely at her, she looked kind of serious.  “Huh,” I intelligently replied.

    “He looked sort of glassy eyed, I thought.”  She returned my questioning gaze with a look of misfortune, or perhaps sorrow. 

    At this point I was thoroughly confused, I mean I am a dang interesting guy; my mom had always told me that.  Mom always said “John, you are a very… well, let’s just say an interesting guy.”  My mom told me, it had to be true right?  She told me straight-up; she’d never lie to me.  Well, actually I know she did stretch the truth at times.  She also told my brothers that they were intelligent and they’re a couple of walking fence posts.  But she’d wink at me when she said that, so I knew she was just humoring them.

    Well, I suppose, now that I think about it she would lie occasionally.  She would say that I was good looking.

        Anyway, I said, “Bored, you’ve got to be kidding me?”  I must have said this a tad louder than I’d meant to, as the room quieted a bit and people edged away from us.  “How could he have been bored when he was talking to me?”  And here is the part that really hurt.

    My wife, my beloved wife, companion for life, bit her cheeks as there were several snickers, and an outright burst of laughter, or three, from around the room.

    I looked up quickly, everyone, and I mean everyone quickly turned around and was suddenly in sparkling conversation with whomever or what ever they were standing near.  “Okay, let me find that picture and we will just see if Tom was bored.”  I stormed off to find the picture.

    Oddly, as I passed Joan, a friend of ours, she handed the very same photo that was under discussion to me, without actually looking at me.

    I handed the photo to my wife.  With a note of triumph in my voice I said, “There, does Tom look bored to you?”  She looked at it briefly and handed it back to me.

    “Look at Tom closely, John.  Tell me, what were you two ‘talking about?’”

    I looked closely; he did sort of have that glassy eyed ‘deer in the headlights’ look.  It could have been just the light in the photograph.  Was it my imagination or did he seem to be looking somewhere, anywhere, for rescue?  “I think we were talking about electron tunneling.”

    “Ah,” she said, as she took the photo back and looked at it.  “Gee, it doesn’t really look to me like Tom is saying much, or anything.”

    “What does Tom do?”

    “He’s a programmer.”

    “You think he knows anything about electron tunneling?”

    “No, but he should,” I vehemently replied.

    “Do you think he wants to know anything about electron tunneling?”  She gently asked.

    “I’ll go ask him,” I said, and turned to look for Tom.  She put her hand on my arm stopping me.

    I took the photo and scanned it.  “No, no it doesn’t,” I replied.  “Holy Moses, I‘m boring the crap out of him aren’t I?”  I looked at her. 

    And this is why I love her, well there are one or two other reasons also but this isn’t the place for those, she smiled tenderly and said “Honey, you aren’t boring him, but he doesn’t really care about electron tunneling.  I know this is hard for you to grasp, but, well most of us don’t, even if we did understand it.”  She leaned in, stood on her toes and softly kissed my cheek.

    “Oh,” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

    “Maybe we could arrange someway for you to recognize that you’re starting to put people to sleep?”  She smiled, “Hey, I could just say John; you are boring the life out of Tom.  Or maybe, it’s time to be quiet now Brian has cobwebs.  Well what do you think?  Do you like any of those?”

    I looked at her skeptically.  “I think you aren’t real sincere with your offer to help here.”

    She laughed and said “I’m sorry honey, how about this?”  She patted above her left breast with her right hand, where a plastic pocket protector would be.  “That would be inconspicuous, and you would know that perhaps it’s time to talk baseball or something instead of physics.  What do you think?”

    “Yeah, that doesn’t sound bad I guess.”  She gave me another kiss and departed.

    It has actually worked pretty well, except that our kids immediately start patting their left chest whenever I talk to them.  Oh well, at least my mom didn’t lie to me about being a dweeb.