I thought the fight was over

By the time they pulled into the restaurant parking lot, the argument was over. It hadn't been much of an argument anyway. It started somewhere around the freeway exit, lasted through two red lights, and ended when Maya said, “Okay, whatever,” and Greg said, “Fine.”

Their friends were already inside, so they got out of the car, walked into the restaurant and joined them at the table.

“How was your day?”

“Good,” Maya said.

“Great,” Greg said.

Menus arrived and Maya opened hers.

“Ooh. Tacos.”

And just like that, Maya was back. She ordered the tacos and Greg ordered enchiladas.

Dinner was fun. Their friends had just come back from a disastrous weekend at a cabin where the plumbing stopped working, somebody backed into a tree, and apparently six adults discovered they had very different definitions of roughing it. Greg and Maya told stories of their own. Greg stole a couple of Maya’s chips and she objected on principle and then smiled. Nobody was mad.

An hour and a half later, they said goodbye to their friends and headed home. Maya was glancing out the window when she mentioned that they should probably stop at her mother's house the next afternoon.

Greg looked over.

“I thought you said we weren't doing that.”

“I said we didn't have to stay long.”

“No, you said we weren't going.”

“I don't think I said that.”

And there it was.

“No, of course you don't.”

Maya looked at him.

“What does that mean?”

“It means this is exactly what I was talking about before dinner.”

Maya was genuinely confused.

“Wait. Are we still talking about that?”

Excellent question, because from her side of the car, the disagreement had ended approximately three tacos ago. From his, the conversation had ended. Those are not necessarily the same thing.

This was surprising because Greg had spent the previous ninety minutes eating enchiladas, laughing about defective cabin plumbing and stealing food from her plate. He hadn't been pretending to have fun. He hadn't spent dinner silently maintaining a list of charges against her. The argument really had ended, but something else hadn't.

The Overreaction Machine has a Dashboard that tracks its current Activation Level and Recovery Rate. Activation Level tells us how worked up the machine is, while Recovery Rate tells us how quickly it settles back down. And different machines can have very different settings. One person's Dashboard can be back to normal before the appetizers arrive, while another person's is still recovering when the check comes.

Maya's needle had dropped quickly, Greg's had not. Unfortunately, humans can't see each other's gauges, they only get to see outward behavior.

And for ninety minutes Greg looked exactly like someone who was having a perfectly good dinner. If they're eating your chips and you’re both smiling, we assume the machinery has returned to normal operating conditions. Unfortunately, this is not a reliable measurement system.

Now they were stopped at another red light.

Maya stared out her window.

“I really thought we were done with this.”

Greg stared through the windshield.

Dashboard level 8.