You Just Have to Show That You Care About it More Than I Do

Cat is obviously the funny in our relationship. Anyone reading this knows that. She’s also a better writer, which is why I’ve let my blogging ambitions be waylaid and have contented myself with doing all the driving to the interesting places Cat then blogs about. And that has been a lot of driving.

Recently, though, Cat has decided to learn to drive a stick. I know, right? I told her that probably something like half of cars in the US are sticks, so she argued in the way I taught her: she Googled it. It turns out it was something like 6% of cars sold last year. I’m sure those numbers were different in 1984, the year my trusty Volvo and I came into this world together, but I digress…

Well, we’re in France now, where automatic cars are still only something like 10% of the market, and we (I) didn’t want to pay the American tourist tax on an already expensive rental to get an automatic transmission. Plus, what better way for her to learn than on the clutch of a rental car?

So, yesterday, with nary 10 minutes of instruction on a back road, she was ready to give the open road a try. So she drove for an hour straight, up and down hills on windy roads, in and out of towns, around roundabouts… I was honestly impressed.

Which brings me to her willpower. She has proven time and again that she can and will do anything she puts her mind to. A week ago we visited Mont St. Michel, and I was trying my best to get a panorama picture of her, the monastery, and a rainbow that had fortuitously sprouted up as we were walking toward the monastery. Everything lined up perfectly, except for one thing.

She had made a terrible face for a picture with ample warning to make a decent one. She immediately defended herself when I brought it up, “I can’t help it! I always make terrible faces in pictures!”

“BULLSHIT!” I said, with more force than I would have been able to muster before meeting Cat. Back in those sad days before we had met, I thought quiet confidence was the best way to convey an idea. That was, of course, until Cat proved that she wouldn’t listen to a single thing I said unless it was said with vehemence.

Since I have learned well, I went on a brief yet passionate diatribe about how she could most definitely make reasonable faces, that she really had no reason not to, and that I was tired of her ruining pictures.

So in every picture since then, she has made very cute and reasonable faces. When I mentioned it a few days later, she laughed. “You really just have to show that you care about the thing more than I do, and I’m happy to do it.” Now I just have to figure out how to apply that to getting her playing video games with me.

Mont Saint-Michel is beautiful, and also overrun with tourists like ourselves. Still more than worth the visit, though. If you do go, eat a crepe at the Sirene restaurant, tucked in above a souvenir shop, with awesome cider and reasonable prices compared to the rest of the place.

– N