Of Thoroughbreds, Artistes, Drafthorses, and Enigma(e)...

Lounging on the couch this Sunday past, watching my Iggles screw up yet again by winning now that they've been eliminated from playoff contention (thereby costing precious draft position) I heard the sound I've learned precedes nothing good.

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

I knew it was going to be a long afternoon, because my wife has an interesting habit, or tic, depending on how you look at these things. When irritated to the point of fury, she taps her foot. Forcefully. Rhythmically. Continually. Her students recognize this as a sign they have gone too far. I've come to recognize this as my last chance to get the hell out of her way for a while. She's generally not an intimidating woman, all five feet and two inches of her petite self, but having survived the crucible of inner-city high schools, she can command a room. She can also flay the flesh from your bones should your transgression warrant it.

This was my situation; I had done something to stoke the fire of her fury, the trick was figuring out what I had done to quickly diffuse the situation before hell was unleashed.

"What is it, Boo?"

"You didn't buy molasses. We need molasses to make the cookies. You also didn't get enough flour, sugar, and eggs to double all the recipes."

Setting aside for the moment the fact that "we" weren't making cookies, that this was in fact yet another Quixotic quest she insists on making every year, I shifted into lawyer mode. Recognizing a false premise when one stares me in the face, I aimed to undermine the substance of her argument that I had failed her, somehow.

“Well, hon, did you put the molasses on the list, and how much of everything are we short?”

Well, to make a long story short, the problem came to differing definitions as to what “doubling” meant. Silly me, I though it meant you’d take everything and multiply by a factor of two; hence “double.” Using my “old math,” we did in fact have everything we needed, considering that we’d made one batch of each cookie the previous weekend. With the raw materials on hand, we could make another single batch of each dough, thereby raising our total production to double that of the original recipe.

Apparently, she wanted to make ANOTHER double batch, effectively tripling the recipe. This she neglected to mention, choosing instead to rely on my highly evolved mental abilities to pluck that single word out of her active dura mater. I am a great many things, psychic I am not. I long ago stopped trying to read her mind, choosing to instead rely on actual communication, be it spoken or written. I am happy to serve as her own Sancho Panza, but I need to know where we’re heading to do so. We each operate differently, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but a recognition of our preferred modes of operation is critical to effectively getting along

Thus, we reach the tie-in with the post title. I am a Drafthorse; my wife, an Artiste. I look to the things to be accomplished, see what needs to be done in order to efficiently accomplish everything without killing myself, organize what I need in order to accomplish the task as quickly as possible, drop my shoulder and push to get it done, mostly so I can get back to entertaining myself or relaxing. I don’t tend to get distracted, but then again I tend to miss a lot of the minutiae that may become important later. It gets done quickly and cleanly, but it’s not going to be Monet, Manet, or any other –et for that matter. The important thing, to my mind, is that it’s done and I can move on. Good enough is often just that. That’s a Drafthorse in a nutshell.

My wife, on the other hand, is an Artiste; everything must be just so for her to begin her work, and then the work only begins if the muse has struck her appropriately. Details tend to get worked out during the course of getting the job done; planning often overlooks or fails to take into consideration exactly everything that’s required. Procrastination often raises it’s ugly head, and that’s exacerbated by the fact that she insists on taking on entirely too much. She wants to make everyone happy, and when she’s done, the results are remarkable; you will have a work of art on your hands, and nine times out of ten it’s worth the wait. Maybe not the drama in getting there, but definitely the wait.

That got me thinking about the types of people in this wide world, and a few moments of contemplation distilled into four categories; the afore mentioned Drafthorses and Artistes, the Enigmas and Thoroughbreds.

You instantly recognize an Enigma any time you’re prompted to think “how the hell did they pull that one off?” This happens a lot in law school. I have a few Enigma friends, some who know they are and happily live with that knowledge, and others who simply have no clue. About anything. Nevertheless, there they are succeeding, while the rest of us gape and wonder WTF?

We all know thoroughbreds. They’re the asses who excel at absolutely everything, inspiring envy, wonder, and sometimes hatred simultaneously. Run a marathon in their spare time, rebuild engine blocks, file taxes for senior citizens, leap small buildings in a single bound, you know the type. More impressively is the fact that they do all of these things effortlessly. Bastards.

So, it all about recognizing not what other people want, or what you want other people to do, but how you need to communicate what you need. It turns out that there was nothing more than a simple miscommunication between the two of us. Nothing on the level of parsing he meaning of the word “is,” but a significant miscommunication nonetheless. I’d like to think that this moment of clarity will help our relationship grow and mature as we enter this next stage of life together.

But it didn’t save me from heading out to get more eggs.