Did you Take My Coffee?

We were off on Saturday afternoon to one of those "family" events. Or at least we were attempting to be off.

The youngest of "our" offspring was going to his senior prom with the lovely young woman who might, if appearances mean anything, be "the one," and his mother (our ex-wife) had invited the entire extended clan to be present for the launching. The young woman had been flown in, using mom's frequent flyer miles from Georgia where she now resides, and they were reunited for an adolescent magical weekend. We were to pickup Grandpa and be present to take some photos and give hugs and wave happily from the driveway as they drove off on the big night...

There is no surer way to set Master into stubborn mule mode than to give Him a time certain that He has to be someplace. It brings up an obstinate streak as wide as the St. Lawrence River from whence His people originate. In His view, only peons need bother with arriving according to the dictates of clocks. So set a time and the stalling begins. To further complicate matters, on Saturday, a dental crisis made the departure even more difficult as a temporary cap chose that particular time window to precipitously loose its grip.

Not surpsisingly then, as our appropriate departure time came and went, I was flying around attempting to prepare the things that I knew He would need in order to eventually be ready to leave -- gathering His odds and ends together, and collecting the far flung bits He tends to leave in His wake.

One of those items was His morning coffee mug which He tends to carry around with Him and leave wherever He goes. I'd picked it up and carried it back to the kitchen in my rounds. He almost always wants a cold drink when we travel in the car, and so I'd asked what He would like, and He'd given me His preference. He then asked, "Did you take my coffee?" To which I replied, "Yes."

Now, there is an interesting quirk to Master/slave communication. Those of us who live as slave tend to anticipate and "read" to a highly nuanced degree most of the time. On the other hand, we can sometimes be quite literal. I remember a class that He and I took on florentine flogging. Some of you may recall the story. I think I told it at one point. The instructor in that case, had asked for someone to demonstrate with and I was volunteered. There I stood in front of the room, floggers in hand. The instrustor, watching me get completely tangled up, finally looked at me, and wanting me to let my arms hang at my sides said, "Drop the floggers." Immediately both floggers hit the floor much to everyone's amusement. Well trained, literal slave, ask no questions, obedient sort of communication mode.

This "coffee" question, it turns out was a similar sort of situation. In His mind, "Did you take my coffee?" was really "Did you take my coffee to the car?" It was not at all meant to be "Did you take my coffee mug to the kitchen?" It was not until we got in the car and on the road and there was no coffee that the variance in the two questions became clear...

Harrumph! Sometimes, this sort of thing can be just too damned difficult in the most annoyingly simple ways.

swan