"Passive aggressive."
"What do you mean, passive aggressive?"
"Well, I mean--you've never heard the term?"
"Nope."
"OK. Aunt Millie comes over to watch the election returns and hides in the corner somewhere. She has lousy hearing, so you offer her a seat closer to the TV. She says, no, no, she's just fine here, this is lovely, thank you. And then later when everybody's packing up to go home, you ask her a question about the speeches, and she says, oh, dear, she's so sorry, but she wasn't actually able to hear them."
"Oh. I've got one of those."
"You have relatives like that?"
"Every woman over the age of forty is like that."
"Hey!"
"You're barely thirty."
"I'm thirty-two."
"So you've got eight years."
"And when I'm forty?"
"I'll go find another friend. Maybe male this time. To avoid the deadline."
"So it's sort of like a friendship with a balloon payment."
"Exactly."
Photo: By Bjoertvedt. Painting: By Auguste Renoir. Wikimedia Commons.
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