Mr. Philately is setting up his new toy, a new laptop computer. Day is looking over his shoulder and drooling. As he works, they are discussing the computer. They are both speaking English but they are not communicating. Regardless what she actually says, all he hears is �Can I have it? Can I have it? Can I have it?� Then again maybe they are communicating. She�s hanging all over him and driving him nuts. She�s the moth and the computer is a porch light.

Mr. Philately and I occasionally have trouble communicating. He seems to be under the impression that what is said is what matters. Foolish man. What is said is the least of it. Tone, word choice, and what is not said are far more revealing, which is why I prefer in-person conversations to telephone conversations.

Take the subject of yelling, for example. Take the subject of yelling�.please. To Mr. Philately, a person who does not raise his voice cannot be yelling. The dictionary says that to yell is �to utter a loud cry, scream, or shout� so I suppose he could make a good case for his position. But that�s beside the point because he is wrong. Yelling is a metaphor. Someone talking through clenched teeth is yelling with every part of his body. Who cares if he is not yelling with his voice?

I remember my mother discussing communication in her marriage. I was home from college and we were in the basement of the house I spent my teenage years in. I believe her 25th anniversary was coming up. That anniversary was the one where my father and my mother had been fighting and my father decided to try to smooth things over by asking my mother what she wanted for her anniversary. She was not ready to let go. �A divorce,� she said. Dad was irrepressible. �Well,� he said. �I wasn�t planning on spending that much money.�

But this conversation was different. It was between my mother and me. �For the first ten years of my marriage,� she told me. �I thought your father and I could not communicate. In more recent years, I�ll concluded that we communicate. It�s just that we don�t agree.�

Perhaps that is closer to what happens to me and Mr. Philately. Perhaps we simply fail to agree. It�s entirely possible. After all, we are in car shopping mode and I have often said that if we ever divorce it will be while we are looking for a car (although if I had to bet, I would say homicide might be a more likely outcome than divorce.)

But how do I tell? And what difference does it make? We�ve muddled through more than nineteen years of marriage and, like my parents, I expect we�ll muddle through a lot more. Fail to communicate? Fail to agree? Whichever it is, it works---most of the time.

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