It's Really All About Me!

Writer's Workshop with Mama Kat.

Prompt of choice: 

2.) Ask a loved one to use 6 descriptive words to describe you and report your findings. How well do they know you?

The prompt this week is very apropos.  Why you ask?  For the Young Women’s activity this week (ages 12 - 18) at church we had a lady come in and talk to the girls about the five love languages.  She was very entertaining and everyone had hilarious stories to tell.  It only reinforced what I already knew about myself and my husband.  

I am very much a words of affirmation sort of person, while my husband is NOT.  It took a couple heated “discussions” early in our marriage for me to figure this all out, but Rob is an “acts of service” sort of person.  So when I would lament and accuse him of not telling me how great I am, he would look at me like I had sprung an extra head and say “I put gas in your car, what else do you want?”  This is true.  He does a lot for me.  I, in fact, have not put gas in my car for 12 years.  I rarely even pay attention to that gas gauge thingie, because I know he has got it covered.  He never leaves town without filling the tank and getting me some cash.  He really loves me!  

But I still love to hear how. . . and why. . . often.  I have settled for occasionally and learned to appreciate all he does for me.

So the prompt that suggested we “ask someone to use six words to describe you” after a night of learning about love languages struck me as funny.  Of course I had to choose it. . . and make Rob answer it.

And of course he narrowed his eyes and questioned the validity of this “assignment”, but with only a little resistance and slight roll of the eyes here is what I got:

Witty -- this is actually the one descriptive word I can get out of him when put into this kind of situation, so I think he means it.  Plus he said it maybe three times while trying to find a mere six different descriptive words.

Dedicated --which he followed with addictive and driven. . .mmmm--do you think he is trying to tell me something here?  I lumped those together and made him try again.  Driven?. . .not me!

Loyal -- I think this is true. . I hope this is true, because this is a trait I greatly admire in others.  

Resilient -- This may be more due to my horrible short term memory.  I get over things quickly. . .because I forget about them.  I don’t hold a grudge well--I forget I am supposed to be mad.  I think life is too short to not get over it and move on--but then maybe I am lucky and nothing too terribly difficult has tested this theory.  

I will tell you who I think deserves the description resilient: Jennifer (She, incidentally, was the first bloggy friend I made from scratch! --by that I mean I didn’t know her before I started reading her blog -- though I found out later that she went to school with my husband. . .If you really care to know more about that she wrote it so much more eloquently than I could.  Go HERE to read it.  We met for real after that first near miss.  She wrote about that too.  And I forgave her for calling me sweet.).

Longwinded -- Just kidding.  But I am sure he thought it!

Creative -- This may be true (I like to think it is) or it may just be that he is extremely left brain, science oriented and sees my creative attempts as sheer brilliance! (or complete nonsense he diplomatically calls “creative”--diplomacy is NOT on my list, but it would definitely be on his).

Spontaneous! -- I suppose when it takes him half a dozen trips to the mall, an hour or so a pop, to pick out a $40 shirt, I seem all kinds of crazy spontaneous.  But even on my terms I do try.    (Though, again, I would venture to guess that in his mind spontaneous directly translates as rash and irresponsible (wait let me ask him. . .)

. . . laughter is now under control.  It went something like this:

Me:  If you were to replace the word spontaneous with another word meaning the same thing, what would you choose?

Rob: Unpredictable.

Maybe he meant that in a “I love surprises” kind of way, but I know something about him. . . he hates surprises.

So, there you go.  Me in a nutshell.  

But I have a secret.  I know his love language, so I will now go perform some act of service to him and all will be well.