Counting the Interruptions: An Amusing Game

Yesterday morning I decided to play a new game. Here’s how it began:

UCC: Good mo-

TCG: Come here and look at this….

The game is to count the number of times TCG interrupts UCC in a single day. Let’s play along. This should be fun, particularly since we had to go out in public to run some errands, and that is always its own form of adventure, albeit often with some creepy details best left to the imagination of someone like Clive Barker.

Driving often provides opportunities for interruptions because there are so many shiny things to catch TCG’s attention. To try to catalog each interruption du jour would have required either a tape recorder or a court reporter, both of which are against the unwritten rules (query: since I just wrote the rule, is it now no longer unwritten?) of WISIMH. Some typical examples will have to suffice.

UCC: What does Jamacha mean in Span-

TCG: do you realize that building over there has a red roof?

…

UCC: When we get home, will you pl-

TCG: When we get home, I’m going to take a nap.

Now, UCC has a strict policy of never resuming an interrupted sentence once the interruption subsides. I could give you several reasons for this, such as it’s not worth the trouble to try to have a conversation, or I was just trying to make small talk to get TCG to use his words, but mostly this policy was instituted because I was pissed and remaining silent avoided what might be considered felony assault no matter how justified.

UCC: I’d like you to glue these dog refrigerator magnets onto so-

TCG: They’re broken, right? Here’s one of the missing parts.

UCC: (Yeah, I know about the rule not to resume, but I actually need him to do something, so I persisted) Indeed, that is the missing part of one of the magnets for one of the refrigerator dogs. Notwithstanding the foregoing however… (when I was a lawyer, that was one of my favorite verbal flourishes) …as I was saying, I want the dogs glued to something else, not to the missing magnet that would enable them to resume life on the refrigerator door.

TCG: Why didn’t you say so?

WISIMH: That’s already the fourth interruption of the day, and I haven’t even made coffee yet.

UCC: I might have said so if you had refrained from interrupting while I was trying to explain.

By the end of the day, I had cataloged 17 interruptions. Exactly two of these required me to violate the (now written) rule about not resuming when I’m interrupted. The first exception is set forth above. The second involved reminding TCG of one of the stops on our route of errands that he seemed to have forgotten:

UCC: You just turned right. Don’t we want to go left to get th-

TCG: I’m just trying this shortcut because I have to pee.

UCC: Good to know. However, I thought we were go-

TCG: I told you I had to pee when we left the grocery store.

UCC: Thanks for the updates re peeing. But I thought we were going to swing by the post office to mail the Netflix.

TCG: I wish you’d told me this before I turned right back there.

WISIMH: I wish I had a nickel for each interruption. I’d probably make ten bucks a day. I also wish I’d learned the Rule Against Perpetuities in school, but I could never get past the Doctrine of Contingent Remainders. Had I done so, my life might have been filled with joy and peace and bunnies, instead of becoming a shipwreck that left me beached with you amid the empty packing crates once filled with all my dreams.