I told the butter story to a friend the other night & realized there's a Part Two.
As the flight attendant walked away, I sat there wondering what I should do. I could chase after her & explain the whole thing: I'm not crazy. I thought it was candy, not butter. I'm not the kind of person who collects unused butter from airplanes & takes it all home to add to some kind of giant butter pile in our fridge.
And then I look over at my husband, a big, gruff German man who is packing all of his spare globs of butter into his travel bag. Presumably to take home and add to that giant pile of butter in our fridge. I stared in horror as he actually put cold globs of butter on top of a sweater and a scarf.
Had the whole world gone mad? I wondered. Had the plane flown into the Twilight Zone, into some alternative butter-centric world? As far as questioning him, where would I even start? With the fact that neither of us particularly likes butter? That it's not outrageously expensive, so hoarding it isn't exactly required? Or maybe with the thought that five minutes outside the cool plane the butter would melt & he'd smell like popcorn for the next six months.
I've learned that a good way to avoid conflict with another person is by asking questions instead of stating opinions. "Sweetheart," I said, "why are you collecting all of the butter?"
He shot me a confused look, then sat back and sighed. "You just told the stewardess you wanted it!"
How had this spiraled so weirdly out of control? I was delirious but not so out of it that I didn't care. My first impulse was to clear up the confusion in one fell swoop. I wanted to stand up and shout, "I DON'T COLLECT BUTTER! I DON'T EVEN LIKE BUTTER! I THOUGHT IT WAS CANDY!!!" But then it hit me: he was doing this for me. He didn't know why I suddenly started craving butter, but that didn't matter. No questioning, no wondering, just always having my back.
So, it's a happy ending -- an unexpected happy ending. Sure, maybe now two people thought I was crazy, but I was okay with that. Because this was the opposite of a red flag. It was a bright green flag. It was another answer to the question, "How did you know he was the guy for you?" Because I knew the next time someone asked, my reply would start with, "Well, once on an airplane he thought I liked to eat butter...."
