Yesterday I was in the bathroom when I heard my neighbours come outside for a smoke. The husband was telling the wife about his exciting plans. He wanted to organise a gig in a park. He wanted to get a bunch of bands playing, as well as a reasonably well-known and successful pop band. There’d be a gold coin donation “at the gate” or “there’d be a collection bucket passed around”, and a hot dog stand. “We’d get the city council in on it,” he explained, so it would “be all legit”.
Obviously there’s more to organising an outdoor concert than just booking the bands and food. There’d stuff like the sound equipment, security, crowd safety, and other stuff that probably only seasoned professionals know about. But just from his excited rant, it did seem that he didn’t really know what he was talking about.
The wife could tell this. She never once responded with anything positive, but instead went to neutral responses like “Uh huh” and “Oh, right”. He kept repeating his idea, seeming to want a bigger, more encouraging response from her, but she remained distant, probably not quite wanting to tell him that his idea wasn’t all that solid. After he repeated his plans for the third time and again got a lack of response from her, he finished with, “well, I think it would be a really great idea and I reckon it would work really well,” almost as if he was saying what he wished she’d say.
