I am an advocate for simple, clear communication. I say this because I have learned over the years that good communication is a complicated process. Questions can be misleading. Answers can be ambiguous. If you’re not careful, you can get caught in the crossfire.

Marion and I are making breakfast sandwiches. Sausage patties and scrambled cheese eggs smushed between two pieces of buttered toast.

“I think I want just a half sandwich,” I say.

She’s standing at the stove finishing up the eggs. I’m in charge of the toast.

“That sounds good to me, too,” she says.

So far, we are practicing the art of communication like pros. We are in sync and our world makes sense. But it goes downhill rather quickly from here.

I propose the question, “Do you want your toast cut diagonally?”

I ask this question because 100 out of the last 100 sandwiches which I’ve seen her cut with a kitchen knife have been cut diagonally. I could have cut the toast without asking, but something told me to check just to be sure.

“No,” she says. “I want mine cut in half.”

My simple, geometric male brain could not quite make sense of her answer.

“You do realize that if I cut the toast diagonally, it will be cut in half?”

She looks at me as if I just fell off the turnip truck and bumped my head.

“That’s not half,” she says. “You have to cut it the other way to get two halves.”

“You mean straight across?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you just say that you want yours cut straight across?”

“I did,” she says.

“No. I asked if you wanted your toast cut diagonally, like you cut all your sandwiches. And you told me that you’d rather have it cut in half. Diagonal is half. Your answer misread my question.”

By this time, we’re both confused. The frying pan is hissing, and the toast is getting cold.

“So, do you want it cut diagonally or straight?”

“Straight,” she says. “In half, like a normal person.”

I couldn’t let it go. “Are you telling me that if I cut it diagonally, the toast will not be cut in half?”

I get the I’m-about-to-slap-you-with-this-frying-pan look.

“I want a rectangle, not a triangle,” she says.

“Why didn’t you just say that from the start?”

I know that I’m living on the edge here. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Married couples, everywhere, are drowning in the vortex of miscommunication. If by our example, some of you can learn to clarify your questions and give straightforward answers to one another, then my efforts here will not be in vain.

It’s a Thursday evening. We are getting ready to cook for a bunch of college kids. The firebox in the smoker is lit. The butts are prepped and ready to go on the rack.

I’m looking at the wagon of firewood and I ask her, “Do you have enough wood?”

There are three possible answers. Yes, I do. No, I don’t. Or maybe we’ll see.

She says to me, “Yeah, I’ve got plenty in that wagon.” Long pause. Then she adds, “But we’ll need more to get through the full 8 hours of smoking.”

Support me here, fellas. I asked if the wood supply was enough. In my mind, “enough” means enough for the whole enchilada. Her answer was yes and no, which just caused me to shake my head.

“If we don’t have enough, why did you just say that we’ve got plenty?”

“We do have plenty.”

“But you just said it’s not enough to finish.”

“It’s not.”

“So, we need to split more wood?”

“I can do that later after we get the butts on the rack.”

“I’m offering to do it now.”

“Well, if you want to.”

There is an art to skillful communication which I have not yet figured out. I am certain that I am thick-headed. Of this, there is no doubt. I know for certain that she knows what she’s doing. I don’t question that. She was handling life just fine before I came along. If there is a failure to communicate, it partially falls on me.

However, I do try my best.

Last week. She cooked late into the night on Monday to get ready for a meal that we were gonna serve on Tuesday. I made the trip to her house on Tuesday after lunch to help get ready. She’s not home, so I call her for instructions.

“What do you want me to do with the chicken?”

“Get the two big coolers that I set out and put the chicken in those coolers.”

“You want the pans in the coolers, or just the chicken?”

You see, I already know that the chicken is in the warming pans, covered with foil, and it’s all been sitting in the fridge since last night.

“No,” she says, “leave the coleslaw in the fridge. Just put the chicken in the coolers.”

I should have caught this, but I didn’t. When I said “pans” I was talking about the pans of chicken. What she heard was pans of coleslaw. She never imagined that I would put the chicken in the coolers without the pans.

Sounds ridiculous? Maybe? But that’s what I heard that she wanted me to do.

By the time she got to the house, I had all the pans washed and set on the counter. I was quite proud of myself.

“What did you do?” she asks with a puzzled look on her face.

“I put the chicken in the coolers and cleaned up the pans.”

“We need the pans to warm up the chicken when we get there,” she says. “You took all the chicken out of the pans?”

“That’s what you said to do.”

I got the eyeroll.

I defended my actions. “I asked if you wanted to keep it in the pans. You said just put the chicken in there.”

“No big deal,” she says. “We can fix it.”

It was a humbling experience for me to reload the chicken into the pans, recover them with foil, and clean the greasy mess out of the coolers. It didn’t quite make sense to me, even when I was putting them in there, but I thought I was following her instructions.

My takeaway is this. My right brain does not always get inside her left brain, and her left brain clearly does not always understand what my right brain is asking. Thank God we both have a sense of humor.

I think we’re both gonna work on our skills together. I’m gonna do my best not to hear what she’s not saying. She’s gonna do her best to say what I’m not hearing. That way, maybe we can take our communications up a notch so that we can understand everything that’s being said.

I’m looking forward to the new us. She can be heard clearly. My questions can be answered fully. I can see a day when there will be no more misfires between us.

One last point.

I still maintain that a diagonal cut gives you a half-piece of toast.