A TERESATalk on Suburban Stockade Tonight

Teresa will be giving a talk at the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop tonight about “Suburban Stockade” (now called “Fed, Safe, and Sheltered”) It’ll be her first, and for the last few days she’s been working on what she wants to say. Naturally, she asks me, her husband, for advice, which I’m naturally eager to do.

“Is it good?” she’ll say, with a look on her face reminiscent of a street person in “A Christmas Carol” asking Scrooge for a shilling to relieve her starvation.

And of course, like a Good and Concerned Husband and writer who knows how to use words, I say, “It doesn’t suck.”

This is the kind of mutual love and support that has kept us together for 26 years.

Then she goes off and spends the day rewriting her speech, which is about how to achieve financial independence and live the life you want. She also emphasizes being aware of your surroundings, living in the moment, and not living on autopilot. Which these days is pretty difficult.

I mean, this is a world that thinks it’s nifty to sell you a device that you put IN YOUR HOME that constantly listens to you. A device that hears everything you say, like a younger sibling, only instead of running off to tell Mom that you called her a doodyhead, it runs off to tell Mark Zuckerberg that you called him a doodyhead.

(I only want to add that it is not true, that we would never THINK of calling Mark Zuckerberg a doodyhead, and I hope he doesn’t shut down our social media accounts across the Internet, including the one on the International Space Station.)

Anyway, Teresa’s been working hard on her talk these last few days. She’s rehearsed it to me twice, smoothing out the rough spots, adding details here and there. Even better, she’s ignoring my helpful advice that she acts more like someone giving a TEDTalk.

You’ve seen them on YouTube, where a bright young thing strides across the stage talking into a wireless headset like they’re trying to land Apollo 11 on the moon, only they’re talking about how putting devices in our home to monitor everything we do is gosh-darn wonderful. That kind of TEDTalk.

To which my wife replied: “I don’t know what a TEDTalk is.”

So I listen to her speech, really listen to her, and realize this: She’s good. She’s energetic, and slyly humorous, and I see her energy and intelligence and love to share what she learned that’s kept us together for a quarter-century.

She’s got it nailed.

So long as she doesn’t call Mark Zuckerberg a doodyhead.