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Sunday, March 4, 2018

Just call us Pete and Repeat







I was telling my family a story after dinner one Sunday when one of my girls said, “What’s that, Mom? I didn’t hear you.” And another smart-aleck daughter replied, “That’s ok…wait a moment and she will say it again!” The girls shared a look and a giggle, turning to smile at me.

“Huh? What are you saying?” I protested. “I don’t repeat myself…do I? Do I say the same thing twice?!”

Then I realized I totally do repeat myself. I blame this new way of talking on the Farmer, for a couple of reasons. First, he is hard of hearing and I often have to repeat myself around him. And second, he is also in the habit of repeating himself. So I think I have adopted his speaking style as a subconscious way of accommodating him. I’m speakin’ his language.

I went to a friend’s place once where the woman of the house was using this particular style of speech. If I may make yet another Looney Tunes reference, it reminded me of Foghorn Leghorn or Elmer Fudd: “That’s a very big rabbit, I said. I said, that rabbit is huge.” Her son joked and called his parents “Pete and Repeat.” Now I realize I have become the second half of that equation.

And now I am extremely self-conscious about the way that I speak. I noticed I repeat myself by saying the same thing, two different ways if I am giving instructions or guidance to our live-in foreign students.

“You already said that,” Tega from Nigeria smiled at me one day. Well I know I already said that but clearly I felt it was necessary to say it again. “It bears repeating,” I commented, and walked away. How fitting a phrase for my predicament. Oh well, she had better get used to it. Mina from Norway has put up with me for five months already without complaint. Whether it’s “don’t feed the dog at the table,” or “lock the door when you leave the house,” they are likely going to hear it twice. Probably in the same exchange. You can never be too careful about some of these things.

I looked up repetition in conversation online, in an attempt to self-diagnose. There are a number of possible conditions leading to my affliction.

I don’t think it’s a matter of forgetting what I just said and saying it again just to make sure. I do have selective memory loss (I only seem to remember the good stuff!), and I don’t think my short-term memory is in trouble. But I do suspect I may have a fear of not being heard. Mostly because I do this repetition thing around my partially-deaf husband, or when I am surrounded by a dozen or more family members at a noisy dinner gathering.

Perhaps it is a sign of insecurity that I repeat myself. But more likely, I think, it’s just a sign of age. I have come to this conclusion because I think I started repeating myself right around the same time I noticed that dark circles had appeared under my eyes. The same eyes that very swiftly began to fail me when I looked at the computer screen and attempted to read what was printed there. Within the space of about six months, around the age of 48, I noticed several significant signs of aging. My grey hairs are resistant to hair dye now. My wrinkle cream no longer plumps out my wrinkles. (It isn’t a miracle cure – it can only do so much!) I have unidentifiable aches and pains in weird places for no apparent reason. I have hot flashes that feel as though the bed is on fire at night.

These are all just observations. I’m not really complaining. I think it’s kind of cool, getting acquainted with my aging self. After all, I have almost made it to 50. I have seen one daughter married and one granddaughter born so far. I am one of the lucky ones. Many women my age are fighting parts of their own bodies that are trying to kill them. At this point, knock on wood, I am able to celebrate my health and the ability to do things that annoy others, like repeating my statements ad infinitum.

I like that phrase so I’m going to say it again. Ad infinitum. Just to annoy my daughters.

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www.theaccidentalfarmwife.blogspot.com




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