Anyhow, you’re probably familiar with this sort of behavior conditioning, right? The stuff about positive reinforcement and punishments… like this:Or at least something like this. My last psychology class was about 18 years ago. Holy cow.. babies have been born and have graduated high school between now and when I took that course in college. Moving on..

Interactions between Graham look something like this:This has been going well for a few years now. So I wasn’t very happy the other night when Graham decided to modify his reaction.

He was playing video games (yes, again) on the first floor, and I was digging through craft boxes in the studio (yes, again) on the second floor when I came upon the still unopened glider we got from the boardwalk in Cape May after cashing in our arcade tickets.

Of course I HAD to use it RIGHT NOW. I slid the squeaky styrofoam pieces together and crept out into the hallway to the top of the stairs. This is how the scene played out downstairs from Graham’s viewpoint:There was whining involved… by me.. while trudging down the stairs to rescue the toy plane from the dog. Not a flinch, or “WTF, Honey?!” as Graham tried instituting this model in our relationship instead:Joke’s on him though. What he doesn’t realize though is that that’s a false assumption. Because in reality, this is what ends up happening:That part that got cut off reads “reinforcement,” but I’ve never been very good at spatial awareness (one reason everyone should be grateful that I won’t drive).

Stacy

PS. I’d like to thank my mother-in-law for providing me with the markers for the diagrams.

UPDATE: After reading this post, Graham yelled, “YOU WEAPONIZED MY MOTHER’S MARKERS?!” Yes, that was a direct quote.