"War...huh...good God Y'all"

I have never really taken a look at what starts wars, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it comes down to two basic premises. 

1.       Someone says something that is offensive to another

2.       Someone says something that is construed by another to be offensive

Silence rarely plays into the realm of war.  Now you can wonder what someone is thinking and make up all sorts of issues in your mind as to what is really going on inside of them, but rarely is it used as an opportunity to launch a full out assault on someone.

Now let’s take it down to the basics of a relationship rather than two countries at odds.  I often find myself at the wrong end of a conversation because of the aforementioned premises.  But of course it is 4-pronged.  I either say something that is offensive or say something that is construed as offensive…or something is said to me that is offensive or I believe to be offensive.

Recently there was a conversation about Cracker Jacks.  There was a package of 24 of them in our kitchen.  They had been there since October 1^st, 2014.  128 days.  There were three of them left in the original box so I broke them down and put them in the cabinet and threw away the box.  Upon noticing the box in the recycling my wife says to me, “So you’ve been eating the Cracker Jack!”  To which I immediately snapped back with all my gruffness “No, I haven’t!”

Now I realize that I was super sensitive because I took the question to be a negative rebuke towards me because ‘I was eating sugar’ or something like that.  When my wife told me that it was merely an observation.

So here’s the funny thing about wars.  The statement may have been innocuous and I merely overreacted, but in dissecting the understanding of it in my mind I could not reconcile it.  What was the purpose of the comment?  If I had been eating them, then I would have been aware that I was eating them and therefore no need to point it out.  If I had not been eating them then the statement is one of misplaced culpability and therefore, intended or not, would have been the basis of defense.

My best reaction in that particular instance (remember this is in hindsight), would have been to smile and say nothing.  Instead I tried to remember each bag that had been eaten over the last 128 days.  That’s accounting for an average of about 1 bag a week and my memory is just not that good.  And besides, the bulk of them had been eaten in the first 4 weeks.  And the last two bags eaten were sometime in early January.  Other than that….Who knows.

My point is that I acted in a knee jerk fashion because of some personal sensitivities.  And while I would like to correct that in myself, I would also like more substantive conversations that are not about who ate what and why.  I think that my wife, whom I love, and myself can find better, more edifying things to banter about.  Just saying.