PANDEMIC DIARY
“YOU’RE RIGHT”…or, The Last Words of a Confident Woman
May 3, 2021
Sunday evening, sitting outside on our screened-in porch having a casual meal with friends, the conversation turned ‘local’. Both couples know young people who are moving. We have friends whose daughter and husband are moving to the Boston suburbs, another young couple to Ann Arbor, another to an outlying part of the borough of Brooklyn in New York, and finally our mealtime friend’s son and fiancé are trying to find a starter home in or around Decatur, Georgia. We all acknowledged that none of these people can afford
The exchange then turned to the Triangle - the Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh corridor - and what has occurred in real estate over the past year of Covid. Nationally, there has been a middle-class, white flight from inner cities to suburbs and beyond. Real estate prices have skyrocketed. Here, in Chapel Hill, real estate prices have increased 7.7% year over year. Good news for home owners. Not so good news for the town’s infrastructure and Rte.40 traffic., or for the minority communities wanting to get a start and share in the now more distant hope (fantasy?) of the American Dream.
However, this post is not about financial, economic, or political issues. Let me explain. Adele and I are frequent walkers. On our jaunts, it is fairly common that we come across home renovations. About one month ago we strolled passed new construction. The house was about 2,800 square feet, but narrow and plopped on, I’m guessing, a less than quarter acre plot. The asking price of the home was…? Well, let’s pause for a moment. Ladies and gentlemen, have you ever had a difference of opinion or disagreement with your spouse when one or the other becomes vehement regarding a shared experience. And, what ensues is a, shall we say, spat that can and does escalate into a brouhaha and finally a falling out that denies both of all pleasure and unity.
I did not pose this as a question because I already know the answer. A most definitive YES. And so, to reduce the chance that Adele and I feverishly interact and say things we will later regret, I devised this game that has worked so incredibly well that these divergent views never escalate into anything more laughable contrariness. Here’s the game: when either of us makes a statement that the other feels is blatantly false or untrue, we will make a bet. The size of the bet depends upon the degree of surety that each marks. Of course, we don’t exchange real money, but we also cannot bet less than a million dollars. If either of us is on the margins of the debate, the bet will be small, albeit a million dollars. But, when we are willing to bet the bank, the sum can go up to 5 or 10 million dollars. At this very moment, Adele owes me 2 million dollars.
A photo from 2014. Adele and I kissing across the International Date Line in Ecuador - O’ Longitude : O’ Latitude
A symbolic gesture to the mediation of differences.
Back to the dinner: Adele and I are one day walking and passed this new construction. When we returned home Adele checked the price of the house on Multiple Listings. The price of the house was $875,000. 875,000 divided by 2800 sq.ft. equals $312/sq.ft. I mentioned this to our friends and Adele immediately corrected me suggesting I was thinking of another house in construction on Hillsborough Road. I insisted that Adele was the one confusing the price of the two homes. She told me, without any hesitation, that I was wrong. Our guests were utterly delighted and amused by this exchange. What did Adele and I do? We bet. Then, Adele went to the multiple listing site and, low and behold, with a peep that rose to the level of a shy mouse I heard the words, “I was wrong”. But, we were in the midst of a conversation so the table hardly heard what Adele said. “Would you please repeat that so everyone can hear”, I cajoled. “I was wrong”, a barely louder confession was uttered to laughter around.
Mind you, Adele did not say, “You were right”, which is likely the next level of self-discovery, admitting that one is wrong by congratulating the party that was correct. Joyfully, this did not feel like a victory because Adele and I have found a way of resolve with a sidebar of ‘funny’ thrown in. But, it does make me wonder about (and here is the question of the day) if it is more common for men or women to be more self-righteous. I know there are a lot of jokes made about men never hearing the words, “You’re right”. Or, conversely, the charge that men should learn to say ‘yes’ to make women happy because they will get their way anyway. But, what is the truth of the matter?
In any case, what is your experience, ladies and gentlemen? Is your wife more right than you, husbands? Do you find that your wife has a better memory for past events? Is she Hermione Gingold to your Maurice Chevalier…”Ah, I remember it well”. (see the wonderful movie, GIGI)