“Fixed—or set?”

An automatic coffee maker is such a simple and apparently innocuous device—something quite unlikely to cause an argument between a devoted married couple, one would suppose. But it was indeed an automatic coffee maker in our happy home that started a rather loud but thankfully brief exchange. Rarely do my dear wife and I have cross words with one another, but on those occasional flare-ups, the cause is almost always words. Actually, the cause is my insistence on the proper use of words as opposed to my wife’s often haphazard employment of language.

To tell the whole story, I must take you back to the beginning of our relationship: Not long before we were married, some 30-odd years ago, I mentioned to this sweet young lady who had accepted my proposal of marriage that words were important to me. She said that words were important to her as well: “How’d we know what’s what and who’s who and what’s coming down, without words?”

My memory has begun to fail at times; some events have begun to fade like Samson’s post-hair cut strength, but that comment and my reply will never be erased from my mind. I must explain that my bride-to-be was a recent college graduate on her way to an advanced degree and thus a well-educated person. Further, you need to know that I am a bit older than this woman with whom I have spent the better and best part of my life, and even back in the infancy of our love,
I had little tolerance for the younger generation.

“ ‘Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world,’ ” I said, quoting Buddha. “ ‘Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs,’ was Pearl Strachan’s advice,” I said. “And Shakespeare wrote, “I will be free, even to the uttermost, as I please, in words.”
I was just warming up: “And Confucius …”

“…is dead!” She cut me off sharply. “Can you quote any living geniuses?”

Ignoring this absurd remark, I used my favorite quotation about words: “Mark Twain said that ‘the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”

“Well, ain’t that just silly,” said this charming lady who I suddenly realized I did not know as deeply as I’d previously thought. Of course I know now that this was her idea of “fun;” she has always enjoyed bursting the bubble of pretension she has noticed about me from the very beginning of our relationship.

“Let me share a couple of my favorite word quotes,” she said with a toss of her lovely head and a sneer on her pretty lips. “ ‘Many wise words are spoken in jest, but they don't compare with the number of stupid words spoken in earnest.’ That’s Sam Levenson. Dennis Roth said, ‘If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind—give it more thought.’” She was on a roll. “I don’t know who said this, but I like it: ‘The Gettysburg Address has 272 words. A bag of Lay's potato chips has 401 words.’”

Jumping ahead to our kitchen and the new coffeemaker: “I fixed the coffeemaker so I can make a nice pot for tomorrow morning,” said my dear wife.

This disturbed me a bit because I had just bought a brand new automatic coffeemaker for her, to replace a worn-out machine that lacked a timer.

Let me explain: my wife has a routine that involves, among other things, getting up at a certain time every morning. Before my semi-retirement, I used to get up before her and it was never a problem for me to turn on the coffeemaker she had filled with water and ground coffee before she went to bed. Daily for decades, she was greeted with fresh coffee and a kiss.

Now, however, I’ve slacked off my early-rising habit and my dear wife must be fed coffee instantly upon arising or her day—and mine—begin poorly. Only our five cats do not suffer when caffeine fails to enter my wife’s bloodstream soon after rising. And that is why I bought a very nice automatic coffeemaker—a quite expensive one that should not have had to be fixed so early in its career.

“Fix? You had to fix that brand new coffeemaker a week after I bought it?” I was already planning a trip to the Mall when I realized that the thing wasn’t broken—my wife had just used the wrong word. Again.

“Oh—you meant to say that you set the coffeemaker,” I explained to her. “You didn’t fix it—you set it. To fix means to repair. To set means to …”

“Drop it, or I’ll fix you,” she said firmly. Remembering what happened to the cats when she used the word “fix,” I dropped the subject quicker than instantly and have never—and will never—use that word again.