When Oysters Say "Honeybee Mine"

Communication can be confusing, especially at the holiday time.

Sometimes despite our best efforts to be clear, the person hearing us speak can get the wrong idea altogether. And I am not talking about living in a house with 2-3 people with an auditory processing disorder, which I do. But between people with normal verbalization, hearing and processing.  When you say “Yule” and they hear “You’ll."  When you say “Reindeer” and they hear “Rain, Dear?” and get out the umbrella.

For instance, an elderly woman from Deer Park arrived home from a Christmas church service to find that her home was in the process of being burglarized. She yelled, "Stop! Acts 2:38!" It may sound like a strange thing to say, but if you were to look up acts 2:38, you would see that it says, "Turn from your sin." The burglar stopped dead in his tracks, dropped his booty of her holiday gifts and froze in place, while the woman calmly called the police and explained what had happened.

The Suffolk County police officers responded with amazing speed. After the police arrived and the officer was cuffing the burglar, he asked, "Why did you just stand there? All the old lady did was yell a holiday church scripture at you." "Scripture?" said the burglar. "She said she had an ax and two .38's!"

That's a perfect example of a miscommunication turning out for the best, which is rare at best. Usually when people misunderstand each other at this time of the year, that leads not to resolution, but further conflict. Not just with strangers, but even more so with those we are closest to. That reality is what puts bread on the table for therapists.

There are stories that every elementary school teacher tells just before holiday break. “The kids were told to describe the difference between a Couch and a Chair and one child deftly explained the difference between a Cow and a Hare.” or “ I asked them about Euthanasia and the student started to tell me stories about Youth In Asia.”  But children aren’t the main ones to do this. One child wanted play doh for the holidays and his grandfather bought him Plato instead.  

It seems to happen more between the males of our species and the females as a rule. Probably because we communicate our thoughts on a different wave length, with the hopes that the opposite sex can decipher the meaning correctly.

You've heard of the book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus?” Well, to be more accurate it should have been called  “Men are Oysters, Women are Honeybees.” Isn't that a great title? It says it all. We are so different. Not only do we speak different languages, we even have different perspectives.

Men are like oysters. They are generally closed mouthed, look for food, look to reproduce and if they get agitated enough they can create something as wonderful as a pearl. The phrase “We need to talk” from someone of the female gender will have most oysters quaking in their shells. Women on the other hand are like honeybees. They are generally into group communicating, look for sweets and nectars, look to flit from place to place and if they get agitated enough they will swarm and sting so hard you’d wish you’d died.  If a guy says, ”mistaken,” a woman will hear “Ms.Taken for granted”.

This is proven in the fact that on any given day during each holiday, my wife wraps more presents than I have wrapped in my entire life, especially with Hanukkah being eight days of presents. In terms of cubic footage of stuff wrapped (known as CFSW), she has basically wrapped the equivalent of the planets Jupiter and Saturn.

She is definitely carrying more than her share of the holiday load especially when it comes to packaging and covering presents like ties, DVD’s, sweaters, electronics, perfumes, house wares, liquor and battery operated animated, wall-mounted singing plastic fish novelty gifts. 

When I said, “Let’s go by the gift wrapping store,” she heard “Let’s go BUY the gift wrapping store," AND SHE DID! Luckily they were having something called a sale-a-thon, although I could have sworn she said it was a Sale-a-thong!

You can come to accept the fact that there will be verbal misreadings this holiday, except for the fact that you will both be stressed and your honeybee will most likely resume complaining to some other honeybee that her oyster was the one WHO STARTED THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE!

But that's OK. Go ahead, blame us. We can take it. Because we're not really listening to the buzz. We're listening to our animated wall-mounted trout sing instead.