Parenting

The Boring Shit I'd Rather My Husband Not Talk About

by Jill Robbins
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Originally Published: 
A woman in a brown shirt looking annoyed holding her hands on her head across from a man in a light ...

The other day my husband was talking about…hell, about I don’t know what.

I’ve semi-perfected the art of giving the illusion of two-way conversation. I look interested, nod and murmur “Oh wow” occasionally. Sometimes this bites me in the ass, like when you get caught zoning in class. But most of the time, he drinks the “I’m listening honey” Kool-Aid.

I love my husband. I even like him (mostly). We have great conversations about great stuff. Truth be told, he’s my favorite person to talk to, ever.

Except when he talks about “Boring Shit.”

I hear two things when he talks about Boring Shit: Charlie Brown’s teacher (wah wah wah wah wah) and Bubba Blue. Forest Gump was a kind and patient man, but I doubt he was paying attention for the entire “shrimp this, shrimp that” litany.

Included in the Boring Shit category:

1. Any explanation of why a disk drive, motherboard, or brotherboard works (or doesn’t work). It’s all “flux capacitor” to me, baby. If something isn’t working, I’ll read a book or stalk people on Facebook until he fixes or tweaks whatever needs fixing or tweaking.

2. Detailed discussions about getting from point “a” to point “b.” My input will not be considered, so any dialogue on travel routes wastes my time. Just tell me when we’re leaving.

3. Conversations about offense, defense or any football stuff whatsoever (except tight ends or end zones because my sense of humor didn’t develop past 8th grade). I get that he loves his Lions. Heaven knows, someone needs to love them, but I wish he’d understand my football knowledge only extends to the actual ability to ID a football in a lineup of balls (tee hee, I said “lineup of balls”).

4. Any sentence beginning with “star”: Star Trek, Star Wars and Star Gate? All the same to me. I know about Wesley Crusher only because Will Wheaton was on Big Bang Theory (and saying “Crusher” makes me giggle). No offense, Trekkies, or ladies still harboring Harrison Ford as Han Solo fantasies. If that’s you, rock on sister.

5. I reserve the right to classify other topics as Boring Shit without notice.

I couldn’t ask for a better husband, but sometimes I just don’t want to listen to him talk. Some of this stuff is over my head or just…well, Boring Shit. You might criticize me for not being more interested in what interests him, but trust me, wink-nudge, I have that covered.

Clearly, my husband has wowed everyone with his stellar taste in women, but he really is the smartest guy on the planet (or at least our street). It’s cute how he wants to share his smarty-pants knowledge with me, and while I try to listen, I usually screw up and glaze out. And yes, he listens when I talk about really important stuff, like who’s a douche on “The Bachelorette.”

I wouldn’t be able to get on the inter webs, or reset the channel changer thingy, if something happened to my husband. I’d miss him and stuff, too. My tuning out what I’ve labeled Boring Shit is a source of contention between us (when I get caught). Maybe I need to make more effort to be interested in his stuff. Maybe I need to work on my acting skills.

Or maybe I just need to practice the skills that might make up for occasionally tuning him out. Wink-nudge.

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