BUG: Deaf Identity and Internal Revolution

Chris, Amy, and the Floating Motion Sickness Pills

Chris, Amy, and the Floating Motion Sickness Pills “I don’t want to give up my freedom.” “I’m too independent.” “I have my own way of doing things and I like it that way.” “I don’t want someone else coming in and disrupting my life or overshadowing my needs with their own.” Over and over I get these kinds of comments from my single friends. Over and over, I fail to understand them. I’ve been married for seven years, and I can tell you that the very thing single people seem to be the most afraid of—giving up their own way of doing things—is the best part of marriage. My wife Amy, in entirely unplanned and indirect ways, is the person who teaches me this again and again. Example: Virginia Beach. Summer of 2004. Now I’ll tell you that, while I’m not exactly married to the female counterpart of Felix Unger (anyone remember The Odd Couple?), I am married to a woman who will not be caught dead without a plan, a map, and sometimes even a chart. Amy is the only woman I know who has the daily planner booklet in her purse cross-referenced with the calendar on our home computer. For her, half the fun of a vacation is drawing up a budget for it, marking the most expedient routes for getting to where we’re going, and creating a checklist of Top Ten Sites to See. 24 C H R I S T O P H E R J O N H E U E R B U G 25 I, on the other hand, have about as much patience for planning as a six-year-old in Toys “R” Us. During graduate school, “housework” for me meant letting used pizza boxes pile up in only the living room (the bathroom had to be kept clear for the piling up of stale towels), and “dinnertime” was a burger and fries at 10 p.m. in the nearest sports bar. So as you can probably guess, quite a few of the early days in our marriage were scenes from Shrek (before Cameron Diaz turned into a female ogre). Over the years, I slowly accustomed myself to the alien concept of being home at 5 p.m. and doing dishes twice a day instead of once a month. She accustomed herself to the spontaneous and adventuresome idea of renting two DVDs for the weekend (and possibly even seeing a movie on top of that!) instead of renting just one a year. It was tough, but we persevered; and seven years later, our weekend minigetaways were things of mini-wonder! Not long ago we went to Virginia Beach for some fun-n-sun. Amy drew up the map, planned the budget, and reserved the hotel room a month in advance. I met her halfway by packing the night before (instead of forty-five minutes before we left as I normally would have) so that we could leave at her usual 6 a.m. instead of my usual 3 p.m. I was a complete zombie in the car—I think it is somewhat ungodly for the world to start itself up before 11 a.m.—but managed to catnap my way into alertness by the time we arrived at the beach three hours later. Amy was happy and skipped all the way to our hotel room, which overlooked the ocean and was really cool! An hour later, we were hitting the sand and the surf. Virginia Beach is packed with tourists posing for Kodak Moments. 26 C H R I S T O P H E R J O N H E U E R Medium-sized tidal waves catch them unawares from behind and toss them, sputtering, into shallow pools of foam with their shorts wedged up their butts. Great entertainment! Amy and I thoroughly enjoyed our day, sitting out tanning until the sun went down. Then we decided to go for a walk along the boardwalk. During our walk, we happened upon a gift shop with an advertisement for parasailing taped to its display window. Needless to say, I was beside myself with excitement! I pointed, I pleaded; I argued that the ocean might boil away in some global warming mishap before we would ever again have such an opportunity! Only $80 for 1,200 feet! My God...