Dropbox, Air Conditioners, Modern Family, And Herbie

     One of my favorite TV shows right now is Modern Family. They had an episode in a previous season that really struck a cord with me. It was the one where married couple Claire and Phil have a fight (as regular viewers know, that doesn't narrow it down because they fight in every episode). This particular fight was because she had been recommending wedge salads to him for years and he ignored the suggestion. Then he came home one evening and told Claire that an acquaintance had suggested he try this new thing called a wedge salad, which he loved, and she should really try one sometime, as though he had never heard of it before despite the one hundred and seventeen times she'd mentioned it to him.

     Herbie and I have been there, done that. Many times.

     Why is it that a suggestion from a co-worker or friend carries so much weight with men while suggestions from their girlfriends, fiancees, or wives are just so much white noise? I don't normally relate to Claire on the show. I usually find her annoying (I hope that isn't because she is too much like me and I just don't recognize it kinda like the way Herbie laughs at Raymond's relationship with Marie without seeing how similar it is to the one he has with his own mother--yikes!) But in that episode, I not only related to Claire's frustration, I wanted her to hit Phil with the vegetables instead of just banging them on the counter for emphasis. They ended up with a broken microwave and their bodies covered in fire extinguisher foam, but I still thought Phil got off too easy.

     I can spend days or weeks on the computer researching a product we need for our home (like, let's just say, hmm, an air conditioner, not because that brings up any strong memories or emotions or makes blood shoot from my eyes, but just random like). I can go to Consumer Reports and read their ratings of every air conditioner on the market, then read posts from people who actually own the units listing the pros and cons, then check thirty different stores' websites for the best price on the highly recommended units, and compile it all into a spreadsheet with colored graphs and a sliding scale for Herbie. I can then go over it page by page with him, pointing out why this particular unit is superior to all other units for our needs. He'll nod and ask questions, flip through the pages, and agree that we should schedule time to go pick one out. We'll get to the store and find the unit we've agreed on, call the salesperson over to discuss delivery options and payment plans, and then as I'm pulling out my credit card, Herbie will invariably say, "I'm not quite ready to buy yet. This guy at work was telling me about this unit that is so cold it will freeze a rump roast left in front of it." And we will return home to sit in front of our old unit that wheezes like it has emphysema and blows air that could warm up a can of soup.

     I'll do research on the unit that the "friend from work" suggested and find out that it isn't a window unit, would necessitate cutting a hole in the 200 year old stone wall of our house, and that it is a black market product since it is illegal to own in the US of A. And we'll start the dance again, only this time as we stand in the store contemplating the unit I'm suggesting, the holdup will be another friend who knows a guy who knew a guy whose sister's boyfriend owned one and thought he might have heard a strange hum coming from it. Or maybe it'll be a guy Herbie had lunch with who has never owned this air conditioner or anything made by this company, but has a bad feeling about them in general and has been right in the past when he's had bad feelings.

     And if this air conditioner story was in fact true and not just a theoretical example of what could serve as evidence in divorce court, it might be three years of sweat and the occasional puff of smoke from the old unit before Herbie says, "Maybe we should buy Model # 39489. Some guy at work just bought one and he loves it," with Model # 39489 being the exact unit I recommended three years ago when it was on sale, which it no longer is. And if this was a real story, I might have said, "Sounds great! Let's go get one right now," waiting until the new unit was safely purchased, installed, and cooling my temper before pointing out that we just suffered through three years of stifling summers because he doesn't listen to me.

     But, of course, this is just a made-up example.

     The same thing happens with news, politics, and funny stories. Heck, Herbie might come home tonight and say, "Remind me to tell you about this funny blog I read at work today where this wife is complaining about her husband not listening to her as they search for an air conditioner to buy. You're gonna love it!" He often tells me that "a guy at work" told him about this breaking news story or that economic trend or some political folly, not recognizing the twitch over my eye that signals that I was the one who told him just the day before. Is it really so hard to remember the difference between the person who gave birth to his four children and the guy who rotated his tires? Hint--I'm the one who smells like vanilla instead of axle grease. Usually. I have been known to get my hands dirty a time or two, but in general, it should be easy to tell us apart.

     The same thing happened recently with Dropbox. I told Herbie all about the service, how it would make it easier to view each others' pictures and videos without trying to fit them into a size suitable for an email, how we could share more as a family if we all had accounts, and offered to set it up on his laptop for him. He nodded in all the right places and then went to bed without granting me access to his computer. Six months later, he was working on that same computer and asked me to help him with something. He handed me a sheet of paper with an email address and password and told me he needed to sign onto something called Dropbox because the techies at his business wanted to use it to share data that was too large to fit in an email. He now has an account with shared access for "the guys at work" but still hasn't set one up to share with his wife and daughters.

     I know Herbie thinks that some of what I say is important. I know this because he has come home from work and spent hours discussing an upcoming meeting about a problem and then has gone to the meeting and suggested the very solutions that I offered in our conversation. Of course, he didn't tell them that they were my solutions, since the very important businessmen would bristle at the thought of implementing a strategy devised by a writer/housewife/mother, but still, he heard what I had to say in those situations.

     It's kind of strange that he doesn't hold what I say in higher regard considering that for the past thirty years, I have been his main source of information and conversation. The first time I met his family, which was at a family wedding, the number one question they asked me was, "Does Herbie actually talk to you? He barely says a word around us." In fact, they had a family joke about how "it is rumored that there is a son named Herbie, but apart from some of his stuff lying around, no one is really sure he exists." In family newsletters and such, he was described as "a man of few words" which struck me as funny because I could barely get him to stop talking to me. He says it's because once his older brothers left home, anything he had to say had to compete with four chattering younger sisters and he eventually gave up. I guess he stored up all his observations, jokes, and stories until he met me and then they just spewed forth unabated.

     Herbie talks with his co-workers and he talks with his friends, but most of his conversations are with me. 98% of what he knows about our daughters' lives is info I pass on to him in the evenings. I keep him up to date on their grades, friendships, disappointments, successes, love-lifes (well, as much as I think his blood pressure can handle), and their careers. When he would ask the girls about their teachers, he would always call them all "Mrs. Snagglepuss" because he couldn't keep track of their real names. I field phone calls from his family and relay pertinent news and gossip. I catch him up on all the news of the world and what's happening in our own little world, like upcoming social events, what the pets have soiled or destroyed, and what absolutely has to be fixed in our home to prevent the township from putting up "Condemned" signs. I stand close to him at family gatherings and tell him what his cousins' names are.

     I am his own personal Dropbox where he can access all the stored data he needs to get by.

     Ahhhh. That's why he doesn't feel an urgency to sign up on his laptop. He has me. Well, Herbie, my "hard drive" is getting corrupted by age and there are definite signs that data is being fragmented in a way that even the Geek Squad can't recover, so until they find a way to download my entire brain onto something that is Bluetooth compatible with your earpiece, your best bet is to access my Dropbox. (As I typed that last line, I could hear Joey Tribbiani or Howard Wolowitz saying it, and it definitely had a whole other meaning.)