Well, the interview went well. The reporter wanted to make it short, but we ended up talking for an hour or so before she moved on to my husband. The questions were standard. How my husband and I met, how I felt about uprooting my life to live in Germany, what were the first things I noticed that were different. Things of that nature.
My husband was pretty excited about it. He came home in a good mood for a change, and shortly before the woman called, he was bordering on obnoxious. Recognizing the signs, I begged him to play nice and be quiet. When I'm on the phone with my mom, he gets all excited like a puppy and runs around making all kinds of noise with our son, as if trying to show evidence that ours is a happy healthy family, making it impossible to hold a conversation for all the racket going on.
When I answered the phone, I sequestered myself in the bathroom, where the echo factor is at a minimum (we have laminate flooring and no area rugs to dampen voices and other noises. Phone calls are difficult for this reason). Three minutes into my conversation, my husband and son walked into the bathroom, deciding it was imperative to wash their hands at that very moment, and that they couldn't go downstairs to do it.
After my son left, my husband kept snapping his fingers to get my attention and pointing to the sink. This man is extremely persistant. He kept doing this until I got up from the edge of the bathtub where I was perched and looked. There was a smudge of dirt in the bowl. Then he pestered me to clean it.
Yes, he did.
And no, I didn't.
I waved him away repeatedly, like the annoying insect he had become, and he finally wandered out again.
Thirty-five minutes into the interview, he showed up again and begins to pester me to get off. I'm telling too much, he says. Again, I waved him away. After I gave some some nasty looks, he left the room. And then the phone disconnected.
Now, when I'm talking to my mom on the phone, it often disconnects after exactly one hour. We're never sure if it's coming from her end, or my end, but that's what happens, and we chalk it up to the transatlantic cable. When I looked at the phone, it indicated I had been on the line for 38 minutes and some seconds before it cut out. How were we disconnected? Did my husband do it? It certainly was not beyond him.
I was mortified by the thought, and we exchanged some words. He didn't admit to having disconnected me. Nor did he deny it. I waited until she called back, and she sounded a little irritated. I apologized and said I didn't know what had happened there, and we moved on.
So after another ten minutes or so, we finished up, and she asked to speak to my large child of a husband. He took the phone and went outside, where he spoke to her by the swing set, under the stars. His part of the interview was considerably shorter. He was humored and truculent at once, after he got off the phone.
He was also very drunk and more than a little obnoxious. A couple of beers and 2/3 of a bottle of whisky will do that to a person. I did briefly wonder what kind of impression he might have made, but let it go. What's done is done. Besides, he can carry himself off pretty well, when he wants to.
Lucky me.
