Friday, December 11, 1992 - North Shore News - 7
CS

INSIGHTS
The subtle art of marital communication

Paul

HUGHES’ > VIEWS

TOMORROW MARKS the
22nd anniversary of the day
my wife — ne doubt due to
a temporary-but-total shut-
down of all her brain cells
— decided to plight her
troth with me.

You will forgive me if I brag a
bit here, but 22 years is one heck
of a long time ... even under the
metric system. I mean, that’s 154
dog-years, for God’s sake.

To put it in perspective, when
my wife and { got married, people
actually wanted appliances painted
avocado-green.

New flea

Pump-up running shoes were
talked about solely in the very
weirdest science fiction books, and
the only people on the entire
planet who could get away with
wearing baseball caps backwards
were cailed Goober or Billy-Bob.

We're talking a long time ago.

I’m going to go out on a limb
and suggest that the first 21 years
of marriage are the toughest.

After that length of time, it
should be no more problem-filled
than a strofl through a sweet-pea
patch.

Surely by then a couple has tip-
toed around virtually every mari-
tal land mine, and earned the
right to fret about nothing more
worrisome than upon which night
table to park their teeth.

Somehow, though, I doubt life
will be so simple. I distinctly recall
thinking similar thoughts after our
fifth anniversary, our 10th and
iSth, and so on down through the
half-decades. Marital land mines,
it seems, never disappear — they
just mutate ... like toilet-bowl
fungus.

For instance, the current crisis
we face involves the fine art of
conversation.

Oh sure, there was a time — at
our wedding reception, for exam-
ple — when [ would babble on
incessantly, filling the atmosphere
around me with such fascinating.
molecules of information that the
entire wedding party fell face

market

could bring great
deal to N. Shore

Dear Editor:
I was happy to hear the North

Vancouver City Council had
altowed businessman Chris
Anderson to open a fica market at
the foot of Lonsdale.

- The flea market business is gen-
erally a difficult business to start,
and needs to be run properly to be
profitable. 1 wish him great suc-
cess.

The comments of the Lower
Lonsdale Business Association
members showed a great intoler-
ance, and, in my eyes, an arrogant
pride, in their attitude towards
flea markets, vendors and cus-
tomers.

To single out the Vancouver
Fica Market as a freak show is ut-
ter foolishness spoken by someone
very ilt-informed.

Comments

The Vancouver Flea Market is a

-well-run business serving the peo-

ple of Vancouver with customers
from all over Canada, the United
States and Asia who enjoy visiting
flca markets.

Many of these people are quite
able to afford to come to Var-
couver and the Mea market is an
attraction they have sought out
many times.

If the new flea market is suc-
cessful and is allowed to prosper
and grow, it will bring a great
deal of business to the North
Shore.

Flea markets are very exciting
places and lots of fun for the
whole family. Good luck, Chris.
Barry Timmins, manager
Vancouver Flea Market

on natives

condescending pablum

Dear Editor:

Although I am not surprised
that the North Shore News
would publish an article like
“The right stuff’ (Wednesday,
Nov. 25), I am astounded by
the comments of artist Unity
Sainbridge.

I am a First Nations person
and reading her statements
made me angry, ashamed and
indignant.

Perhaps it would help if you
put yourself in my position
reading, ‘“‘This old native
woman came to my door with
a carving. knife,’’ and ‘She
found the native villages heav-
enly. She adored their bohe-
mian charm.”

What condescending pablum.

People tiving in remote
villages, below the poverty line,
suffering multiple social prob-
lems, is not charming. Get
real!

Then finally, ‘My squaws,"’
she says with affection, can
just as easily read ‘*‘my nig-
gers,’’ There is no difference.

tm sorry that [ even have to
take the time out of my busy
life serving First Nations and
non-native people to have to
write this letter.

1 am also certain that Bryan
Adams doesn’t need the
publicity of his mother pro-
moting an artist like this,

Mahara Allbrett
North Vancouver

down into the soup.

This period cf my life lasted
quite a while, actually ... roughly
uatil my wife threw her bridal
bouquet.

Now, though, the phrase, ‘‘Talk
to me, husband!,’’ which echoes
off the walls of our apartment all
too frequently these days, causes a
panic in my sou! that is horrible
to behold.

1 desperately want to satisfy by
uttering something profound,
something deeply philosophical,
something that will put me in the
Husband Hall of Fame.

Instead, 1 usually end up in the
closet, muttering, ‘‘Have you seen
my beluga whale hat?’’

The trouble is ’m not one of
life’s conversationalists. [’m
probably cutting my politically
correct throat, here, by stating
that | believe most men aren’t.

An unofficial poll of the hus-
bands in my apartment block, in
which | asked them to list the
number of sentences containing
more than three syllables they had
spoken to their spouses in the last
24 hours, produced the following
tesult:

“THREE syllables?? Can't you

44 When my wife and I got married people
actually wanted appliances painted avocado-
green. 99

make that ... say ... one and a
half??""

Men do not tend to communi-
cate verbally. 1f a man gets upset
about something really important
— say his wife, rather than re-
cording the Grey Cup game while
he was at work, instead taped
four hours of a special
MacNeill-Lehrer Report — he will
not say, ‘‘Hey! I’m upset, here!’’

What he will do is wander
around for days, banging his fist
into walls, kicking large cement
objects with his fect, and generally
seeking methods to inflict perscnal
bodily injury, until his wife, des-
perately trying to find an explana-
tion for the puddles of blood in
the living room will remark,
‘*Why are all the bones in your
Land crushed, and why do you
have a bruise the size of Montana
on your foot?”

Only then will all become clear.

According to a recent survey of
divorce lawyers who now own at
least one mid-sized continent, the
leading cause of divorce in this
country is that women tend to
communicate using actual! words,
while men make their feelings
known largely via sulking.

Some people will insist — most-
ly women, | suspect — that this is
because men never grow up. They
are basically —- theyll say — in-
sensitive, childish, schmucks.

Personally, 1 beg to differ. I
believe that | am a highly devel-
oped individual who has simply
icarned a more spiritual method
of communication involving
nothing more than air electrons.
{1's only a matter of waiting for
evolution before my wife catches
up with me,

b wwase pass the bandages.

Remember kids, Tn checking

twice

‘Lo see who'l!

-Lhose nice Ze percent

wage iNereases.

How about some
nice. rhetoric’!

AIDS not a ‘gay man’s disease’

Dear Editor:

! read in horror, and unimitigat-
ed anger, the letter sent to the
North Shore News by John
Christensen (Mailbox, Dec. 2).
His antiquated ideas on heroism,
AIDS and homosexuality cannot
be left unchallenged.

1 find it hard to accept that
anyone can still believe AIDS to
be a gay man’s disease. The risks
of any unprotected sexual activity
regardless of gender can be dead-

Peter’s sexual preference
had absolutely nothing to do with
his heroism.

In fact, [ am repulsed by a
man, and/or a society, that can
lessen the loss of an individual
simply because hie was gay.

Dr. Peter Jepson-Young is
deserved of either or both Orders,
because of his courage in the face
of a disease that claimed his life,
and in sharing this information
with us.

If Dr. Peter has enlightened,
comforted or educated even one
person with his diaries, then his
passing will not be in vain.

However, I take great cffence
in the uneducated opinions of
Christensen, and those who feel
the same.

To assume that anyone deserves
to be ignored, suffer or die
because he ‘*... performed
homosexual coitus once too often
«.’" or’... was a physician and as
such had the advantage over most
in the realization of the risks in-

herent with a homosexual
lifestyle”’ is simply unacceptable.

Regardless of how this disease is
contracted, it is a disease no one
is immune from.

As such, one’s life and work
should be respected for its worth
and value, and have nothing to do
with lifestyle choices.

If some would feel that such a
man’s memory would be ‘‘a gross
degradation of these two Orders
..."? (the Order of Canada and the
Order of British Columbia), 1
pray that the same people can find
it in their hearts to rethink their
prejudices, before it is too late.

Ignorance, not homosexuality,
is the real enemy.

Shirley Ann Giljevic
North Vancouver