In the Village: Analyzing a quarrel over 'nothing'

I just saw a rerun of an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond," in which the husband and wife have a quarrel about a new can opener. The point of the episode was that even when quarrels seem to be about something trivial, they are really about more serious underlying issues.

Except that even the underlying issues are trivial, and the real problem is even deeper, at the core of character. So often, quarrels in a family, regardless of what they are "about," are caused by good old-fashioned sin.

Either someone is trying to conceal a sin — in which case they often lash out at the person whose lack of sin puts them to shame — or someone is expressing a sin which they have not yet rooted out of their heart.

(For anyone who dislikes my use of the plural "they" when the antecedent of the pronoun is the singular "someone," ask yourself first if you have any problem using the plural "you" when speaking to a lone person, for whom the correct pronoun is the singular "thou" or "thee." Resorting to plural pronouns when singular is grammatically required is a fine old tradition in English, and it gives us the neuter pronoun that we so desperately need when we wish to be imprecise about gender.)

Let me give you an example of such a quarrel-about-nothing which is really about unrepented sin.

Bob and Celia — fictional husband and wife — are at Subway with two teenagers. Bob has ordered two 6-inch sandwiches for himself, one a hot meatball sub, the other a cold spicy Italian.

Bob is surprised to see that Subway has started putting eat-in sandwiches in plastic baskets instead of paper bags. At which point Celia pipes up with an instruction to the sandwich-maker. "Those two can go in the same basket," she says, referring to Bob's two sandwiches.

Only Bob doesn't want the two sandwiches in the same basket. One is hot, the other is cold. The meatball sub is wet with sauce, and he knows it will get all over everything — he wants to keep it separate from the cold sandwich.

So easily this could become a husband-and-wife quarrel. Bob, filled with umbrage, might say, "I'm standing right here, Celia. If I want my sandwiches put in one basket, I can ask for it myself."

Celia might defend herself. "I was just trying to help." Or she might go on the counter-offensive. "Oh, so you want to try to fit two cumbersome baskets on the same little patch of a table."