As The World Turns

When Earth flips over, the Mrs. can't say I didn't warn her

"DID YOU READ that the world is going to flip over?" I asked Mrs. Johnston the other day.

When the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston mumbled something like, "Whatareyoutalkingabout?" I took it as a sign of interest in the world flipping over. Granted, it could have been her way of telling me to leave her alone, but I took it to mean otherwise.(I must digress here. In most relationships, each person has to tolerate something that appears to be insane to any outside observer. For example, Mrs. Johnston believes if she speaks calmly to our children that they will stop whatever madcap activity they are doing and immediately pick their dirty clothes up off their bedroom floors as she asked.

(Ha! I think it is a sign of insanity to believe that the kids would stop talking on their cell phones long enough to listen to their mother, much less run to their bedrooms to pick up dirty clothes. But Mrs. Johnston continues to try doing it, and I accept it.

(Mrs. Johnston accepts certain statements by her husband without snorting too loudly when I say them. For example, I tell people that I asked Mrs. Johnston to marry me on our first date. Mrs. Johnston used to try to correct this so it didn't sound like we stumbled across each other at a shopping-mall deli and I asked her to marry me.

(It was a little more involved than that — and it wasn't a shopping-mall deli — but I like my first-date-at-the-deli story better. Mrs. Johnston now just lets the stories flow, and she allows me to expand on those stories without correcting them. "You know, it didn't happen quite like that," she used to say, interrupting a perfectly good story with factual information.

(I will stop digressing now and get back to the world flipping over.)

One of the many nice things about being in a long-term relationship is that you have plenty of time to carry on a conversation for several years. I don't mean you get on one subject and talk about it non-stop for 20 years. That could drive anyone nuts. No, I mean you can read something in the fifth year of marriage and share this with your spouse. She may think you are nuts for passing along this information but you may read something about the same subject in the 10th year of your marriage. You can remind your spouse that what you said was true five years ago and it is still true five years later. And it will be true in another five years, in which case you will remind your spouse.

The main benefit here is that you get to drive someone you love nuts, and you get to do it over and over again, for decades. Not just years, but decades!

It was maybe 15 or 20 years ago that I read a story about a scientist who said every few million years the world gets out of balance. He said the frozen soil north of Alaska gets warm, the polar caps melt and the next thing you know the world flips over.

The North Pole ends up where Arizona used to be and the South Pole is in Italy. Meanwhile, Seattle is under 5,000 feet of ocean and the big stink about the monorail is forgotten.

The guy who did the research was laughed out of the business, but there was a story in the paper a few weeks ago that said the frozen soil around Alaska was thawing out and the glaciers at Glacier National Park would be gone in a few years. It has been thousands of years since this has happened.

I read this story to Mrs. Johnston after her "whatareyoutalkingabout?" comment. I think I am getting to her about the world flipping over.

"I'll nail my feet to the floor," she said.

Steve Johnston is a retired Seattle Times reporter. His e-mail address is stevejonst@aol.com. Paul Schmid is a Seattle Times staff artist.