Get Your Passport Ready January 25, 2011

There are some things you will learn about your spouse only after you marry them. For example, I had no idea Lance snored and had conversations in his sleep on a regular basis until our honeymoon. Also on our honeymoon, I learned something about him that affects the way he handles minor stresses:

with a full-blown panic attack breakdown.

My first glimpse of this was when we were flying out of Mexico to go back to the states. We had
P
L
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T
Y

of time but Lance was SERIOUS about getting in line with his passport ready. I remember sitting there in one of the seats at the gate watching him standing up around where they board with his passport in hand, ready and open. This was apparently a life or death situation and he could not take the chance of the pages being stuck together in his passport causing us to not be able to show his face and miss our flight.

I laughed at him then but really, I was the fool. This would be the rest of my life. We still joke about that in moments where he is, lets say, “over-reacting”. I call it “Get your passport ready” and that’s exactly what I say when he is entering his flip out mode. We even have a gesture to indicate the breakdown. All you have to do is give a big, dorky nervous smile and hold your hand up to your face as if you are holding your passport for quick and optimal identification. Even 6 1/2 years after the honeymoon, we still do this.

Last night we experienced this effect. I was on the phone (unfortunately) so my sister heard the total loss of Lance control.

He had chipped a ceramic bowl, stepped on the broken piece, and then upon trying to remove said piece, cut his finger. Sound the alarm, Lance has cut his finger!

Now what Lance would wish for me to tell you is that is wasn’t ‘a paper cut, Rebecca!’. It was a real gash.

True, and while it did bleed for about 45 minutes, worst case scenario is going to the ER to get it glued up.

I understood this so I was calm, as the situation would cause one to be. He acted as if he had severed his arm off onto the kitchen floor and here I was just a talking on the phone while he fought for his life.

Get your passports ready, please.

Because I wasn’t acting in accordance with this terrible disaster, he does what all logical people do and begins to walk around the house bleeding on to the floor, washer, sink in both the bathroom and the kitchen, hmmmmm, where else?

Of course this was because he needed a towel or something and, “I am selfish and don’t care!”

“Don’t care!!!!!” is one of my favorite things he says in times like these because he is acting like something traumatic has happened and I’m just humming a little tune to myself like it’s no big deal.

Sort of like when we went running in our neighborhood at night and he turned his ankle. I totally get that it hurts but all sympathy is lost when he sits on an electrical box and says in all teary drama, “I’ll never be able to play basketball AGAIN!” Not, “I’ll have to sit out a season. Guys, this is forever. Put the ole’ basketball shoes in a shadow box on the wall for memorial.

When that starts to happen I just completely watch him like he’s a sideshow and I can no longer take him seriously. It’s almost like the more he freaks out, the more I’m just a normal ole’ person.  This usually makes him freak out more.

The thing is, he never spazzes about things that matter or the big issues which is I guess good because I, like a normal person, do that. He’s more of the “foil got stuck to my oven pizza” explosive type.

“Lance, I want to use fertility treatments and have 14 kids.”

He would be totally calm.

“Lance, I burnt your chocolate chip cookies.”

You know what to do. Get out your passport.

Inevitably, he calms down after these ordeals and realizes that he was being a freakazoid.

I wanted to end this piece with a picture of the injury. Lance knew I was going to write a blog about it so I walked into his office and said, “I’m gonna need a picture of this.” He laughed and told me no.

I don’t know if you guys were ready to see a picture of an index finger with a band-aid on it. If you weren’t, Lance would totally understand. You could always google phrases like “cut my finger” “cut my finger with a knife” etc. like Lance did last night when I was “not caring” about the “tragedy at hand”.  I will warn you though that you may end up pulling up graphic images of hands slashed by knives which is totally not what happened to Lance.

At the end of the day, I’m just glad we pulled through.  He didn’t even get blood on his passport.  It was a good day.

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