In Which I Must Converse

“Are you actually going to converse with people?” Tom asked.

“Depends. If they have an I Love Twilight shirt on, probably not,” I answered.

Tom frowned. “Amber.”

“Tom.”

“You need to make sure you talk.”

He was referring to the marriage retreat we are going to. It’s Friday-Sunday and it’s for couples who will be experiencing deployment. It gives ways to cope and all that fun stuff.

And yes, there will be conversing.

It’s just, I’m awkward in social situations. I tend to say things that I THINK are funny in my head but when I say them I’m met with blank stares. Or Tom will say, “This is my wife Amber,” and I’ll repeat dumbly, “Hi, I’m Amber,” like I’m Leonardo DiCaprio from the Gilbert Grape movie even though Tom has just said my name. So the person is staring at me curiously as if waiting for me to say again, “I’m Amber,” while thumping my chest like a monkey.

Someone once asked me what perfume I was wearing. I admitted I rubbed it on from a magazine sample and was looked at as though I admitted to loving thongs.

So yeah. While I’m looking forward to this weekend, I’m also nervous.

There’s also a worrying fear that they’ll make us play cheesy getting to know you games. You know, where some usually peppy person is all, “Okay, write down two truths and a lie and we’ll all guess what the lie is. Haha!” No one likes those games. Well, maybe some people do. The ones that like to please everyone. But the general population gets tired of those games after the age of 10. I prefer to give my name like a normal human being.

I also hate trust games. No, I’m not going to fall back and trust that everyone is going to catch me. That has nothing to do with life. Or maybe it does, but not really.

A lot of these classes start early in the morning. I am not a morning person. And on Saturday morning, there’s an optional breakfast with the base commander and I informed Tom I’d rather not go.

“You should go. It’s the base commander. It’ll make me feel better since I’m deploying soon.”

“She won’t even remember me,” I insisted.

“She might. You can be a memorable person,” Tom answered. (See: magazine perfume comment.)

The thing is, that breakfast begins at 8, and like I said, I am not a morning person. This means I have to wake up even earlier to look presentable—I don’t think I could show up in my Happy Bunny pajamas.

I’ll go, to make Tom happy, but I’ll try to down some caffeine before I show up. Not too much though, or else I’ll behave like a spastic bunny and scare everyone.

We’ll see how it goes. I am hoping to find ways to cope better with Tom being away. There are times when I’ve had freak outs and I’m going to try and eliminate those. Although I am NOT like one of those wives who behaves as though everything is rainbows and glitter whenever she speaks to her deployed husband. No, I tell the truth. I just have to work on saying, “The kids have been driving me bat shit crazy and you know that airplane model you had? It died. It must be so nice to have down time over there because I don’t even remember what down time is,” in a better manner.

I’ll be sure to report how it all goes!