It’s 11 a.m. and I’m thinking about pancakes. I’m at the new, just-opened Denny’s in Maricopa, Arizona. This is not the average run-of-the-mill Denny’s that many of you might be familiar with. This is like Strawberry Shortcake Denny’s with pink and red striped awnings and cherry red neon lights spelling out breakfast and lunch. Maricopa doesn’t have a real-life, well-known, sit-down chain restaurant. Maricopa offers lots of fast-food joints where you scream your order at the cashier behind the counter. You scream because the teenage employees have cranked-up the music so loud your head hurts.

“NO I DIDN’T SAY FLIES, I SAID FRIES!”

That said, Denny’s has come to the desert with its 24/7 breakfast, and Maricopans thrill at the idea of ordering from a real table with non-plastic silverware and ceramic coffee cups.

With more customers than tables, Denny’s makes a wait list. We herd into the lobby. I’m with my fun compadre Phyllis and we squish in between other customers as we take a seat on the padded bench against the wall. We cram in like Oscar Meyer wieners stuffed in a package. Phyllis types a happy anniversary message on her phone and sends it to one of her longtime friends. I wistfully comment on how long Jerry and I have been married. Adding, “Jerry and I racked up even more years of marriage by having starter marriages before we met.”

“Hah, Hah, hah,” laughs the lady smashed in beside me. She has obviously been eavesdropping.

“Ya know,” says the lady. “I had a starter marriage until I was 29. Then I had another marriage. And now I have no marriage because I’m taking a break from men. I have a job. I have two kids to take care of. I have no time to care for a man. Men are different from us. We women feel. Men want to fix things. We express our emotion, and they don’t understand. They say, ‘Let me fix it.’ Or they listen and take some offense to something we’ve said. But they wait a week before they unload on us. I don’t have time for that. Not me. I’m taking a break.”

Oh, you sing it Sister! Yes, men are so different from us. They are like Mars and we are Venus. We need a break from Mars. Hallelujah!

“Sounds like you need a spa vacation,” I say.

“Now you’re talkin’,” says the lady and locks eyes with me. Her dark eyes launch fiery lightning bolts. Or, maybe it’s sunlight shooting through Denny’s new windows. I’m not sure. “Men just yak, yak, yak. They just keep talkin’ and talkin’ ’bout things that don’t interest us. But they don’t care if it interests us. They just want us to say, ‘oh, that’s so nice, you are so good and so smart.”

I clap and sway. Preach it Sister! Preach it! Phyllis starts a conga line of unity with all the women in the lobby. You go, Girl!…

Suddenly I find myself confiding, “I don’t switch gears very well. And when I’m on the computer or reading a book, my husband will come in and start telling me something about a machine tool he bought on eBay, or something similar like that. It’s hard to focus on what he’s talking about because I’m still thinking about the story I’m reading or the email I’m writing. I don’t want to stop him from his enthusiasm because I think it would hurt his feelings. But sometimes I say to him at a later time, “Please don’t talk to me while I’m on the computer. Just tell me you want to talk to me and then I will give you my full attention when I’m done. And then for a while all’s well, then he forgets and it’s back to the same thing.”

“NO!” shouts lady. She says this with the same kind of horrified expression you might have when you discover a monster in your bathtub. “If you say ‘don’t’ to a man, that is like telling him to do it. You say instead, ‘I need you to talk to me when I’m off the computer.’ You get what I’m sayin’? A man needs to feel needed. That makes him feel manly.”

Phyllis tells me the hostess called our name.

“It was good talking to you,” I say to the stranger. She shakes my hand and tells me her name is Melba. I think of toast…burned, smoldering, smoking hot toast. How odd, I think, to get marriage counseling from someone taking a break from marriage.

I know she’s right, though. Expressing a need, rather than a want, is definitely more productive. If I say to Jerry, “I want [fill in blank], he will think, ‘Well, people in hell want ice water.’ If I say to him, “Don’t [fill in blank], he will think ‘I will do what I want to do.’ But stating ‘I need’ makes him want to do what he can to fulfill my dreams.

At home, later that day, I tell Jerry I’d like to talk to him.

“Just a second,” he says and stops everything he is doing. He grabs his barrel-sized coffee cup and plunges into our couch. “Whatcha’ need?”

“Jerry, it bothered me when I would be working on the computer or reading a book and you would come in to talk to me. Sometimes you’d say ‘sorry to interrupt’ or sometimes you would just start telling me what was on your mind.”

Jerry frowns, wondering if he should get up and leave hastily. But he stays and I continue. “When I broke my hip and had surgery and rehab, you were so devoted to me, making sure the nurses and doctors took good care of me, sitting by my bed for hours, and cooking for me when I came home and helping me with the things I couldn’t do. I realize now that I don’t mind stopping and listening to your machine tool purchase or whatever you want to tell me. Because I know that you are there for me when I need you and I want you to know I’m here for you when you need me.”

Jerry says, “I want you to know that I’m happy with my life, but if I didn’t have you I wouldn’t be happy.”

What a kind thing for him to say. And just think, if not for Melba preachin’ her heart out, we would have never had this heartfelt conversation. Thank you Melba, wherever you are.

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