“If it ain’t broke; don’t try and fix it.”
In January 2008, about 10 years after Angie and I started dating she suggested we see a “couples’ counselor”. “Why not?”, I thought to myself, it will make an interesting chapter in my book. What have I got to lose? I don’t drink, I don’t gamble, I don’t smoke and I don’t fool around. I have no debts and I’m self-sufficient. Let’s face it, I was perfect. But we all know the saying. “I love you, you’re perfect, now change.” Women love projects and challenges. I say “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. But I was in a relationship with a perfectionist. Things have to be perfect according to Angie. And from experience I can tell you that Angie adjusts (fixes) things until they break. “I just need to correct this slide, oh damn, the slideshow has crashed.” And many other events like that. “It needs more sugar, oh damn, I put in salt by mistake. I think it needs more cinnamon, oh shit I put in paprika by accident”. Stuff like that happens quite often in our house. I usually just shrug it off and make the best of it. But I always knew that Angie would keep working on our relationship until it broke.
Angie worked for the North York General Hospital in Toronto and was entitled, under her group benefits plan, to three free counselling sessions with a psychologist. So, on a bright crisp Saturday morning in January 2008, we attended our first session. The psychologist’s office was in a Christian Fundamentalist church about 15 minutes from our house. We parked and entered the building. I could see that down the end of the hall, sitting in a glass paneled office, was the psychologist and a couple in their early 40’s. The couple left and it was now our turn.
We entered the small cubicle of an office with a desk and two chairs for Angie and me. Behind the desk sat the psychologist, a tall, well-dressed black man from the Caribbean who asked us to call him Christopher. We sat down in front of the desk. Me on the left of Christopher and Angie on his right.
“So”, he began, “what brings you here?”. A reasonable question. “Well”, Angie began, “I have a list of ten issues for discussion.” Christopher’s hand shot up to his face trying desperately to hide a grin. Not possible because his white teeth were shining like car headlamps either side of his black hand. I was grinning. I hadn’t known about the “issues” let alone ten of them. I was beginning to feel like Moses, waiting to receive the Ten Commandments. Like him, I was intrigued and excited. What a chapter this is going to make in my book.
Christopher regained his composure and continued “well we won’t have time to cover all ten issues what if we cover the most important issue today?” Angie thumbed through her notes and settled on what she felt was the most pressing issue. Christopher and I were impatiently awaiting the “big” issue. “Well”, Angie continued, “here it is, Russell likes to be first (passenger) on the plane”. A flash of black skin shot up to Christopher’s mouth, but this time his grin was wider, I could see twin headlamps and his shoulders were heaving up and down as he tried to stifle a laugh. I was giggling because I alone knew where this was going.
A psychologist has to deal with all manner of personal and relationship problems. Spousal abuse, gambling addictions, financial problems, too much sex, not enough sex, you name it, he’s heard it. But being the first on the plane? This had to be a first, too.
Christopher composed himself and looked at me sitting there giggling away. “And why is that?”, he asked with about as much professionalism as he could muster. Let’s face it, this had to be the first time in his life, let alone career, that he had ever heard that complaint. My husband likes to be first on the plane. Really? This is the most pressing issue? He likes to be first on the plane? That’s it? He was eagerly awaiting my reply.
I started my explanation. “It’s my mother’s fault. She taught me how important it was to be first on the plane. I have been traveling by plane since I was seven and I will be 65 this year. Back in those days there was no seat selection. It was first come, first served. First on the plane meant that you could sit in the best seat away from the noisy engines. I have a vivid recollection of my mum walking out on to the tarmac at Madrid airport, boarding our plane and putting our coats on the seats she wanted and then returning to the gate. Try doing that today! After 58 years of travelling I know where my seat is. I know that if I have seat 99A it isn’t going to be at the front of the plane. I’m fed up crawling slowly behind people whose seats are clearly at the back of the plane while they carefully examine and re-examine their boarding pass at every row like demented infrequent fliers. I am fed up walking behind people who are pushing their luggage instead of pulling it. I am fed up with these pushers abruptly stopping because their bag has hit a seat and we all pile into them like circus clowns. I am fed up lining up behind over-sized passengers carrying over-sized bags and standing there while they try to stuff these over-sized bags into an under-sized, overhead baggage compartment. When I get to my seat, I want my correct sized carry-on to be above where I sit not further down the plane where getting to it during the flight is going to be a pain to other passengers not to mention that trying to retrieve it upon landing is going to be worse than swimming upstream like a salmon.” (Christopher is moments away from full blown hysteria. What I say next will definitely be the tipping point.)
I continued, “So in order to avoid all this chaos, when the agent gets to the point in the boarding process where he or she asks for anyone who needs a little extra time, I get up and limp up to the agent”. That was the tipping point. He’s now hysterically laughing. Tears are flowing and shoulders are heaving and I have a new chapter for my book. Angie is mortified. I turned to her and said, “But I don’t do this anymore. I haven’t done this for a while since you asked me not to”. Angie was clearly puzzled at this turn of events and asked me how it was that we still boarded ahead of everyone else. I explained that in order to comply with her wishes and still allow me to get on the plane ahead of the disorganized rabble, I had bought club memberships which allow us to pre-board.
That was that. The most important reason we were going to counselling didn’t actually exist.
The meeting ended at that point, Christopher was exhausted from trying to maintain his composure and we left the building.
A clip from The Trevor Noah Show, Ap 10 2018.