The Art of the Bicker

My wife and I do not need a topic to bicker. We are never at a loss for words because we are not constrained by facts, logic, consistency, or good manners. We like to play Scrabble with the dictionary open and Bridge with the cards face up on the table. We have not played Chess since the time Mollie swept the Yugoslavian hand carved pieces off the board decades ago. We rarely accept defeat graciously. We know others are scandalized by our behavior, so we restrain ourselves in public. Unfortunately we found that even when we think we are behaving, we scandalize others. When Cousin Chris was released from prison, he visited us once and that was it. Modern technology has been a big invasion of privacy. Teachers on Microsoft Teams and Zoom have had to gently ask our grandchildren to “remind your grandparents that we can hear them in the background.” Family members tell us they not only see us on home surveillance cameras but they can hear us approaching. So we get caught on recordings describing their landscaping style as Tornado Aftermath or confirming a code word signal to use when we are bored to death and desperate to leave their party. Our grandchildren surreptitiously record us on their cell phones, so they can regale their parents with evidence that we are as crazy as ever. We should get a Bicker Pot where we could draw out fresh topics to bicker about on any given day. But we would probably bicker over the pot, where to put it, and the process for filling it.

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