February 10, 2018 – The pot calling the kettle black

         It all started with my husband thinking I was a miserable grouch.  I am a miserable grouch when I have a cold or the flu and I am still dealing with being miserable and I know I am a grouch when I am miserable.  But, he is no better getting over this ‘togetherness-in-all-things’ which includes the cold/flu that we both have. 

No, I will correct that.  The husband had it seven days while I was caring for him, including all the hand sanitizers and bleaching down the counter tops, etc., and I got worn down and I caught it.  Then we both had it and he might be over it, but I am not.

         Something set me off while I was reading in the living room and he was watching yet another true murder mystery show.  He adores Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda, and I have to admit Kenda is the best because Kenda has a great verbal commentary during the incident, chase, and finally getting his man or woman as the case may be.  But, the similar show was droll and I wanted to see the breaking news and we had a few words.

         “Curmudgeon,” I said as loudly as I could with this sore throat.

         “Mudgeon?” he asked.

         “Curmudgeon,” I repeated.

         “What’s that? Where are you getting these hundred-dollar words?”

         I smiled, then trotted to my writing office and grabbed my dictionary.  The word curmudgeon sort of popped out of my head and I hadn’t used it in a long time, in fact I wondered if I had ever used it verbally before. It is strictly a word you see in print.  I remembered a few years back while waiting at a doctor’s office, the phrase in that article was, “. . . I think I’ve become a curmudgeon.”  I knew immediately what the writer was saying because the writer had described how I felt at the moment, being so sick and having to wait to see the doctor.

         Fuzzy headed from this cold/flu, I looked it up to see if I was on point.  Oh my, the print seems so small now in my 1984 printed dictionary.  I had to flip back and forth to find it, eventually at the very bottom of the page.

         Curmudgeon, noun – A cantankerous person.

         I put the dictionary in front of him and pointed to it for him to read.

         “Well, you are no different,” he remarked.

         “Like the pot calling the kettle black,” I answered.

         Later he asked, “What would you like me to call you?”

         “Tenacious.”

         “Why?”

         “That was the word that little Brit used for my server password at the law firm in Spartanburg.”

         He only raised his eyebrows a bit.  He didn’t know the story.

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         Back then, pre-Internet connection – we had one server for 12 gals in the office.  For some reason the pint-sized British gal who was in charge of the computer system had to come up with individual passwords for all users. These were secret to her until months later.  One was “Queen” for the Queen Bee Deborah, [her exact personality]; another was “Merry” for Mary who had a nice disposition.  Most of the rest were also alliterative. Since this Brit, and I [don’t tell me I am being rude, she called us Yanks which makes it tit-for-tat territory] had locked heads more than once. I eventually won out when she came up with “Tenacious Teri” unknown to me at the time of her creation. 

         She and a few of her allies at the office thought it was highly amusing behind my back since it was one of the many that were rude.

         However, one day the Brit was out sick and I was basically shut down at my computer until someone re-set or re-booted my computer. [This is back in the late 1990s with servers and mainframes that simply didn’t have enough memory.]  They called in an outside vendor, computer technician, who didn’t know the passwords until management started asking around the office.

         When one of the allies was discussing my situation with management, unknown that I was within hearing range, she listed off several of the passwords before she came to mine, so that it would possibly “soften the rudeness” of it.

         When the computer technician came to my station I asked, “What is my password?”

         He hesitated at first and then gave me a clue, “They sort of all rhyme, yours starts with “T”.

         “Tenacious Teri?”

         He was taken aback a moment that I had guessed it.

         “Fits me perfectly, I am tenacious just like a terrier,” I said adding, “strong-willed, persistent, determined, insistent, steadfast.” 

Soon, the word got out around the office about the Brits’ divisive passwords for each of the office staff and more than one person asked me if I felt insulted. 

“No, it’s actually a compliment.”

I’d locked horns with the Brit on more than a few occasions and had won more battles than she had.  I wasn’t naïve, I knew who was friend or foe in that environment.  In fact, I flaunted it in her face when I had to deal with her in the future. I would use my tenacious tag and her eyes would glitter dangerously which only proved to me that she was a foe.

         I’m sure my husband will forget curmudgeon but I expect I will be hearing tenacious in the future when we have these little domestic skirmishes.