The Silent Treatment

Never to you, Blog.

Of course, mama is a giver and a taker.   Do I not loooove the silent treatment in all of its awkwardness.

I used to have a friend in the early 80s. We were very close. I was seven? We had just figured out how to speak on the phone.    So of course I was sitting down on the floor of the galley way kitchen while I tried to entertain Monica through the neon yellow cord that was attached to my telephone.


We would talk about school and things, an then all of a sudden she would stop speaking.   And we would sit there in silence with the phones held up to our ears but saying nothing.

I think it was an unspoken contest.   So she would go silent, and I would think.... okay now I am gonna wait her out.  This is gonna be the time that she has to  end  the call and break the silence.

I mean she had a sister.  Maybe something would HAPPEN where Monica just couldn't stay silent on the phone for that long. Nope.  Crickets.

Every single goddamned time, I couldn't make it.  The chirping of crickets for minutes (in those days the phone company charged by the minute) and I would finally blurt out.   BYE.


And as soon as it came from me, she would rejoinder, sing song BYE!!  I didn't realize at the time that this was my training on how to be patient.  Anytime someone has a "bone to pick with me", as my mother would say, I just think, hell yeah I will just pretend I am on the phone with Monica.

I can wait FOREVER.