My father has a couple of stand-by stories he pulls out at parties and stuff. One of them is the story about the man who got sick and asked his wife for some juice.

You see, my dad explains, marriage is about scripts. Everybody brings a script about life into a marriage. One is not always aware of the scripts he or she brings to the table, but they are always there. And it is when the scripts don’t match that conflict arises.

So, for example, take the sick man and his juice. Growing up, whenever he got sick, this man’s mother would immediately put him to bed and then bring him stuff. Pillows, books, what have you. She would fuss, as mothers are prone to do over their children. But best of all, she would bring a tall, iced glass of juice. The perfect statement about love and care. It was all about the juice. Juice=love.

This man grows up, marries a nice woman, and not long after he gets married, he falls sick. So he puts himself to bed, and waits.

Nothing happens.

He calls to his wife, “Honey? Are you there?”

She answers back, from far away, “Yes, I’m here.”

He waits.

Nothing happens.

She doesn’t fluff his pillow.

She doesn’t bring him books to read.

She doesn’t fuss.

And there is no juice anywhere to be found.

Finally, he croaks out, “Honey? I wasn’t aware we were out of juice…?”

She pokes her head into the room and says, “We’re not out of juice. We have plenty.”

And then she leaves.

Feebly, he calls out again, “Well, can I have some? Maybe?”

She pokes her head in again and says, “Oh! Would you like some juice?”

Is she SERIOUS? Of COURSE he would like some juice! JUICE is how you express your LOVE!

He nods, pathetically, and she disappears to the kitchen. He anticipates how lovely the juice is going to be, this big, tall, glass of cold goodness.

She comes into the room, carrying the juice.

It’s in a small, tiny cup.

And it’s room temperature.

The man starts to weep.

My father always ends the story by saying that this couple (Are they imaginary? I’m not totally sure. I hope so. If not, then it’s one wussy sick dude, is all I’m saying) eventually discussed the juice problem. They come to find out that the wife grew up in a home where if you were sick, you got left alone, thank you very much. No fuss, nobody in your face, just peace and quiet to let you rest. Juice wasn’t part of the script. Quiet=love.

I was the last sibling in my family to get married. The reason I’m telling you this is because every time one of my siblings got married, my father would pull out this juice story, dust it off, and tell it to anybody who was listening. I’m not sure who else was listening, but I heard this story a lot.

And every time I heard it, I wondered—What scripts do I have that I don’t even know about? And what scripts are my future husband going to have that he doesn’t even know about?

And plus, I REALLY like to drink apple juice when I’m sick. I often would think, WHAT IF MY HUSBAND DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT THE JUICE?

Of course, I did get married, and of course, we did discover our different scripts. We have had several script meetings, if you will, over the course of our marriage, including the ones about illness protocol. I told him about the juice. (I’m pretty sure he’s forgotten, though. It’s okay.) 16 years in, you’d think we’d have figured them all out.

And then we adopted a dog who snores.

Here’s the thing. My husband grew up in a basement bedroom that was pitch black, cold, and loud. His bedroom butted up against a storage closet where the water heater was stored.

That water heater? It is loud. Like, super loud. Like, ALL NIGHT HISSING SOUNDS loud.

My husband and I slept in that bedroom in his parent’s house when we would visit, and that damn water heater would keep me up most of the night. I would be half crazed at 3 in the morning, listening to that sound and wanting to rip my own ears off, just to make it stop. I’ve even slept on the floor in the room outside of that room, just to get away from the sound. It. Is. Crazy. Making. (They have since replaced the water heater with a silent one. Thank goodness.)

It would never bother my husband a bit. In fact, he said he sort of preferred the sound. The result of a childhood spent next to that heater is that my husband’s sleep script is a dark, cold (preferably breezy), loud room.

MY sleep script, however, involves a night light, no breezes at all, and absolute silence.

Yes, we’ve had many script meetings about that over the years. We’ve worked out a compromise—we keep the room dark (no nightlight), but breeze and noise free. So far, it’s worked out, although he does lament the loss of the pregnancy days when I was so hot and uncomfortable that I had to sleep with like 2 fans on me at once. (I remind, him, though, of also how grumpy being so hot and uncomfortable made me, which usually stops the reminiscing.)

So I was pretty sure that we’d hashed out our sleeping scripts pretty well.

Getting back to the dog…

We have a new dog who sleeps in our room. Our previous dog either slept in the garage or, when she got too old to get in and out of the garage, she slept on her bed on the landing of the stairs. She snored, but didn’t sleep in our bedroom so it didn’t matter.

Our new dog, however, is young and spry and HATES his crate in the garage, and developed an unfortunate habit where, starting at 4am, he would yelp in his crate until somebody got up to put him out. And when I say “until somebody got up”, I mean that one night we let him carry on yelping for OVER AN HOUR.

I’m way, WAY too old to be sleep training a dang dog.

So we ditched the crate and now he happily sleeps on the floor in our room.

And he snores. A lot.

My husband hates it. He had his own 3 am crazy moment the other night, swearing at the dog and calling him names.

I slept blissfully through the whole thing.

Turns out, my sleep script involves the sounds of dogs, too. I grew up with dogs, I must associate their sounds with security and relaxation. I would have never told you this before, but apparently I find the sound of a snoring dog remarkably soothing.

Yeah, that was a rough script meeting.

We’re still working on it.

Maybe I should bring my husband some juice.

What are some scripts you didn’t know you had? How have you compromised with your spouse about conflicting scripts? Share your good script meeting stories!


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