I’ve mentioned before that she is extremely adept at finding the single negative needle in a haystack of positivity and focusing solely on that. This was one of those times.
She’s taken to drinking coffee in the mornings, but (like most things domestic), she prefers me to do, even though I wrote her out step-by-step instructions on exactly how to make coffee using the French press (how much water, how much coffee, etc).
I always get up ahead of her and make the coffee, and if it looks like she’s going to be sleeping a while longer, it goes into a thermos.
That’s what happened this morning. I got up at 6:30AM, made coffee (which takes 20 minutes, what with waiting on the kettle and grinding the beans for two French pots, heating the cream, etc).
7:30AM, she came rolling out into the living room and asked me to pour her coffee. That was it. No good morning, no “Oh, thanks, you made coffee,” just “Would you pour my coffee for me?” - which I was fine with doing.
I grabbed a mug, poured the coffee, brought it to her, and then went back in the kitchen for a few minutes.
A few minutes later, I asked how her coffee was, and all she said was:
“I don’t like this mug! The handle’s too small!”
Now, where I’m from and how I was raised, “How’s the coffee?” has but one response, and that’s, “It’s great, thanks!” - or some variation of that.
Someone has been thoughtful enough to have made you coffee. Someone has been nice enough to pour it and bring it to you. You answer that with something polite and a little grateful, not with a snippy complaint about the mug, and that’s all.
Even an answer of “It’s fine, thanks. I don’t really care much for this mug, though, I’m going to pour it into a different one,” would be ok.
That’s what I mean by her always focusing on the one negative aspect of just about anything.
“How’s the food?”
“Well, the service could have been faster.”
“How’d you like the movie?”
“Well, I wish we didn’t have to park so far.”
“How’d you sleep?”
“Well, I could hear the elevator down the hall sometimes.”
Rarely ever anything positive, even if she enjoyed something overall. “How’d you…” for her is always interpreted as, “What didn’t you like?”
Back to the coffee, I told her it was just a cup and quit complaining so much, go get another one if she didn’t like it, maybe say “thanks” for once, and she took exception to that.
It’s a classic difference in upbringing. I was raised Midwest Polite, which means say something nice, even if you have to lie through you teeth and trash it later out of earshot, and she was raised with that sort of Northeast Directness, which means say exactly what you think, even if it’s shockingly rude, and if they have a problem with it, tough shit!
All of her family are like that (except for her mom, who was…wait for it…a good ol’ Iowa farm girl), very brusque and casually offensive.
