No journey would be complete without a little bit of turbulence. And while Ben and I have been fortunate to have pretty smooth sailing, all things considered, there was one night/morning while I was in India that we had a bit of miscommunication.
It was his morning and my evening when we had agreed to chat later that night when I got home (see, Ande, I think we DID plan phone dates occasionally…but Ben sees it differently, as this story will explain). He clearly didn't remember that agreement because while I waited up waaay past my bedtime (and that’s late!) to get a text from him saying he was ready to chat, I didn't receive one until I could barely keep my eyes open anymore saying "hanging out with the guys -- talk to you tomorrow!" (the time difference was about 12 hours).
Since I was already in that loopy stage of tired, I typed up a snippy response and went to sleep. The next morning, I woke up and hoped that I hadn’t actually sent the response, as I realized it was pretty childish. But, when I ran to the phone and checked my sent messages, sure enough, this was sitting there in my outbox:
"Oh. Well I just stayed up late thinking that we were going to talk tonight. But I guess not. Whatevs."
Whatevs. Nice, Kim. Very mature. That's what I left Ben to ponder for the rest of his night with his friends. Text messaging isn't always the best for communicating emotion, but Ben certainly got the picture and later told me that he was quite nervous about what I was going to say when we did get the chance to talk the next morning. I, of course, was completely embarrassed. Fortunately, he diffused the situation pretty well (as he does) when we got on the phone by saying, amidst his apology for the miscommunication, "Whatevs? Really? That was pretty funny." To this day, whenever we start to get a little snippy, one of us will simply chime in "Whatevs," and that seems to break the tension quite nicely.
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