TIME FOR SOME NONSENSE!

**In case you’ve missed them, or just need some nonsense, the Bickering Banters are back. **

“Martha, you’ve got that look on your face”

“How do you know what look I have on my face? You’re not even looking at me.”

“I don’t have to. You’re standing 2 feet away from me and staring at me, waiting for me to look up from the paper. I can sense it.”

“Extrasensory perception, Matthew? In 50 years of marriage, I have never found you particularly perceptive when it comes to reading my face or my mind…unless, of course, you have access to AI. According to the latest news, AI can read my thoughts now. Isn’t that terrifying?”

“Wow…that is terrifying…reading your thoughts I mean. Well, if it’s any consolation, darling, I wouldn’t want to read your mind, Martha. It’s pretty convoluted in there, isn’t it? Heaven only knows what I’d find if I dug any deeper. So, that said, what is it you’re just busting to share with me this time? 

“I want to move to Finland!”

“You want to move to Finland? What on earth for? We already live in a bloody cold country…not to mention that in Finnish Lapland, the sun sets in late November and doesn’t rise again until mid-January. So why the heck would you want to live there? You love sunshine!”

“Well thank you for the information I didn’t ask for Matthew Banter! How thoughtful of you.”

“Uh-oh. Are you in one of THOSE moods today?”

“And what moods are those, Matthew? Not sure AI can read my moods yet, but you can?”

“Oh, you know what I mean Martha. I know it’s not menopause ‘cause you’re way past that. So what is it? I was just trying to be helpful. If you’ve got moving Finland on your mind, I thought a few facts would come in handy.”

“Well this may surprise you Matthew, but I have been doing some research on Finland because you always remind me that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. So, since you’re so into facts, I checked some out and did you know that in the summertime, on sunny days, Finland might get 18 hours of sunshine, and Finnish Lapland gets up to 24?”

“Well, I did know that too…”

“Of course you do! How stupid of me to think otherwise!” 

“Oh come on Martha. I wasn’t trying to make you feel stupid. You’re too sensitive.”

“See, you’re doing it again!”

“Doing what for Pete’s sake? Martha, wait a cotton-pickin’ minute before you go off on your high horse again. What’s all this rubbish about moving to Finland? Didn’t you tell me just a few weeks back that you wanted to move closer to the equator? Something about you’ll weigh less if we live closer to the equator? So now you want to go to the opposite extreme and move closer to the North Pole? Is this some more BS from that stupid online science publication you read? What’s it called again?” 

“IFL Science! And it’s not stupid. Why are you mocking me, Matthew? I don’t criticize you for what you’re interested in reading!”

“Aww, I didn’t mean to upset you, hon. Looks like I keep saying the wrong thing today. I’m sorry. Let’s start again. Now what’s this about Finland?

“O.K. Let me spit it out without you constantly interrupting, please. It’s something I read on CNBC a week or three back. It seems that Finland ranks Number 1 in the world as the place to live if you want to be happy.”

“Martha, I am happy wherever I live as long as I’m with you.”

“Oh Matthew, you suck-up! Sometimes you really do say the sweetest things. But you see what you’ve done? You made me completely lose my train of thought. Did you do that on purpose?”

“Oh Man, is it Friday the 13th today? I think I’m jinxed. Listen, before my coffee gets cold, I think you were saying something about Finland and being happy. You know me and my hearing aid, darling. I just can’t keep up with all the words, especially given the speed at which they tumble from your lips. And you have a habit of letting your voice drop toward the end of a sentence and it just becomes a big mumble for me.”

“So, your hearing problems are all my fault now?”

“Did I say that?”

SILENCE

“Martha? Are you giving me the silent treatment now?”

“Not really, but I wasn’t quite finished talking.”

“You rarely are! Oops! Scratch that. Martha, why don’t you tell me what’s really on your mind. You don’t seriously want to move to Finland, do you?”

“No.”

“Then what’s eating you this morning?”

“The book I’ve been asked to review.”

“You’re upset about a book you have to review? Is something wrong with it?

“It’s boring.”

“So. Don’t review it then. Can’t you tell the book review editor you don’t want to cover it?”

“No. They stuck me with it because no one else wants to review it and, besides, it’s a memoir. My editor figured since memoir’s my specialty, I’m the best one to review it. The deadline is two days from now, I’m only 1/4 of the way through it and it’s boring me to tears. I’m so frustrated I could scream!”

“Oh, Martha…please don’t scream! That really hurts when it comes through a hearing aid!”

“Let’s not discuss your hearing aid again, Matthew! This is serious! I mean the very fact that I want to move to Finland because people are happier there should tell you something.”

“Martha, dare I suggest that moving to Finland or even Point Nemo won’t fix your current problem with your book review deadline.”

“Point Nemo? Where the heck is that?”

“It’s a point in the vast Pacific Ocean and is considered the remotest place on earth. It’s not even an island. It’s simply a point in the ocean. In fact, if you could sit in a dinghy at that point, the nearest inhabitants would be the astronauts in the International Space Station.”

“And this is important to me right now why?”

“Oh just trying to lighten your mood with some interesting information I read on one of the sites you left open on your iPad when they missed delivering my Saturday paper this past weekend.”

“Ha! That was most likely that site you just called stupid: IFL Science. Guess it’s not so stupid after all, eh Matthew? Anyway, let me ask you something else altogether. Do you believe in reincarnation, Matthew?

“You kidding? The whole idea is ridiculous. Why do you ask me that now?”

“I guess I’m procrastinating because I don’t want to get back to reading that book. But I can’t help thinking that if I died and came back in another life, instead of reviewing boring books for pennies, I could be making a fortune as a J.K. Growling or Stephanie Queen…”

“Who? Come again?”

“Just checking if you’re paying attention, Matthew. That’s my addle-brained version of Author Scrabble. But just think, maybe in another life, or a parallel universe, instead of writing banters like this, if I lived closer to the equator, I could write about “The Old Woman and the Sea” or if I lived in Finland, I’d do a Stieg Larssen and churn out a blockbuster novel titled “The Boy with the Dragon Emblem” or “The Girl Who Kicked the Bee’s Hive”.

“Martha, I think Stieg Larrsen was Swedish, not Finnish.”

“Thanks for correcting me again. Matthew, don’t you ever get tired of always being accurate?”

“Well, as Edmund Burke once said, “Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.”

“Well bully, bully for Edmund Burke. I’m afraid I’m more of a Dr. Seuss.”

“In what way? What does Dr. Seuss say?”

“He says, ‘I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.’ He’s definitely more my kind of writer.

“Okay, Martha Seuss. Whatever you say.”

“Well, there’s also this bit of wisdom spoken by Robin Williams.”

“And that is?”

“Robin Williams believes we’re only given a little spark of madness, so we mustn’t lose it.”

“Well, if you want my opinion, darling, you got more than a lion’s share of madness and that’s without crazy ideas like moving to Finland or living in a parallel universe, or being reincarnated.”

“Matthew, I’ll dismiss that insult on the grounds that you just punched a hole into my dreams of one day writing something unique and more memorable than a banter or a review of yet another boring book!”