I open my eyes to meet my wife’s gaze. For how long Elaine has been waiting for my first moment of consciousness I couldn’t say, or even why she’s there, but it’s clear that I’m soon to find out.
“Do you know,” she asks, “why bird’s knees are backwards?” Her eyes bare down at me demanding my attention.
Any voice at this moment is jarring and unwelcomed, but being smacked with a question is unforgiveable. Surely she, knowing my limitations, wouldn’t be asking me something the moment I begin to claw my way out of sleep. I’m barely functional in the morning, let alone able to discuss the subject of animal knees. So, I figure I must still be dreaming.
“Well, do you know?” There’s her voice again
“Why are you asking me this?” I’m incredulous.
“I want to know if you know,” she says. “I recently read about it.”
“Why don’t you just tell me why, instead of ask me?” Not that I really care at this moment.
“Because when I tell you something, you always say that you already know it, so I thought I’d first check out whether you had this information or not. And if you said that you knew, I wouldn’t end up telling you something you already know.”
“There’s lots of shit I don’t know. What do you mean, I always say, I know it?”
“Whatever,” she says. “So, do you know why birds’ knees are backwards?”
“At this very moment, I don’t give a rat’s ass why bees’ knees are on backwards—.”
“Birds knees, not bees.”
“Whatever,” I mimic back at her. She’s hovering over me, the elbow propping her arm up, head resting on fisted hand. She’s here to stay until I deal with this–morning fog or not. She finds interest in these kinds of facts. I might too, if it were sometime after four mugs of coffee when the part of my brain that still works has kicked in.
Resigned, I say, “I don’t know, why do birds have their knees on backwards?”
“Because, she says, triumphantly, they’re not knees, there ankles!” She’s gloating.
I can’t get into her bizarre fact for the morning, instead I say, “Your response wasn’t an answer to the question you posed.” I’m aware I can be a pain in the ass.
“Yes it is.” She insists.
“No it isn’t,” I maintain. “You asked about the bees’ knees—“
“Birds knees,” she, once again, corrects.
“Okay, Birds’ knees.” I’m desperately trying to hang on to the frayed thread of my point, not having a drop of caffeine to fuel my brain. “But the question should have been: ‘what is that visible joint located on the legs of birds?” I explain, “Then, I would have figured the seemingly obvious answer, knees, is not correct, so I’d have said, ‘I don’t know, tell me.’” And you could have said, ‘they’re not knees, they’re ankles.’ Then, I would have been impressed and asked you, where are their knees?”
“Their knees are inside the body.” She says, ignoring the fact that I’ve pointed out how she’d worded the question incorrectly and have just dispelled an erroneous belief of hers that I always know everything.
Finally it hits me…”Wow, knees inside a bird. It must be incredible uncomfortable.”
“Well,” she revises, “They’re not exactly in the body, they’re up close to the body, obscured by feathers.” She looks at me innocently.
“Still weird.”
“It works for them,” she says. “Now, I’ll get your coffee.
(To read about what can happen when you don’t eat your veggies, scroll down.)