I Still Can't Predict Him

I'll never understand men...well, at least the one I'm married to.  I have known Geoff for eighteen years and still, I cannot predict what will come out of his mouth, or why.

Last week, about to leave the house to head to the airport for our flight to San Diego, I was feeling pretty organized.  Even so, it seems like there's always a last minute flurry in our household just before we have to leave.  Have we forgotten anything?  Have we packed the kitchen sink?  Passports?  E-tickets?  Purse?  Bathing suits?

Check, check, check, check.  I took a deep breath and announced that we needed to get into the van. Now.  I started pushing luggage out the door and told Matthew to get a move on.  Come on, come on, come on.

Halfway into the van, Geoff suddenly looked at me, serious and intent and urgent, and announced that we needed to program the GPS.

"With what?" I asked, stymied.  I knew the way to the airport, for Pete's sake.  What on earth did we need to program it for?  Were we inventing some new use for global positioning that required re-programming?

"With the address of our hotel tonight," Geoff answered.

"Oh," I said, bundling us into the van and wondering why on earth plans should stop in order to find the GPS and sit down to put an address in.  "Well," I said, "no worries. I have an excel spreadsheet (yes, really) in the backpack with all of the addresses we'll need and tonight's hotel address is at the top of the list.  It'll take me about thirty seconds to plunk the address in."

"But we need to program it into the GPS now," he insisted, impatient.  "It'll save time when we get there and have a screaming child on our hands."

"Why would we have a screaming child on our hands?" I wondered aloud.  Matthew is a great little traveler and I'm not anticipating any screams that don't involve shrieks of laughter or pleasure.

"I don't know," he answered lamely, "but I really think we need to program the GPS."

I just looked at him.  Then we continued to get into the van.  And I laughed.  I will never comprehend why, in those last, hurried moments, what was on Geoff's mind was programming a GPS with an address that I will have at the tips of my fingers while he's loading luggage into the trunk of the rental.  I think I laughed for a full half hour and had a hard time stopping, even when Geoff suggested that the time for laughing and sarcasm might, in fact, be over.

"I guess I'm an enigma," he stated in the end when I was still wondering (out loud) how his brain worked.  "And I provide you with constant fodder for your blog."

Indeed, my dear.  Indeed.