Posts tagged ‘men’
Note to Husbands. Just so we’re clear.
If your wife should appear in the kitchen wearing an item of clothing you’ve never seen and says something like, “Oh my gosh! Look what I just found! I thought I had gotten rid of this! This was my favorite skirt when I was on tour! Isn’t it cute?!” then the only appropriate response is:
Yes.
Do not respond, “I don’t know. It looks kind of like a trash bag.”
WRONG ANSWER.
Even if you hate it, the only thing you should say is, “Yes.” Or perhaps, “Yes, Dear.”
If I wanted your actual opinion, I would have said, “What do you think?” Should I ever drag you along clothes shopping (which I would never do) and am trying on skirts and say, “Should I get it – what do you think?” then you should give me your real opinion, although hopefully more along the lines of “I liked the other one better”, or “I don’t know – that one’s not really you,” rather than “It looks like a trash bag.”
But that’s not what I said. I said, “It used to be my favorite skirt. Isn’t it cute?”
Yes, dear. Yes.
Crisis in Marriageland
I am not a wife who snoops. Once or twice I may have casually looked through a drawer just out of curiosity, but I wasn’t looking for anything in particular or with suspicion. And I would never spy on The Husband’s computer files or internet browsing history – it’s important for people in a relationship to maintain privacy boundaries.
However, sometimes it is impossible not to see something. I logged on to our shared Netflix account and up popped The Husband’s recent streaming selection. I sat, staring and unable to speak, like a young Mormon newleywed walking in on a game of tug of war with the cyclops. Porn? you may be thinking. Bestiality porn? A Gay Bestialtiy Snuff Film?
No, that would have been fine. Instead it was …
Bill Engvall: 15 Degrees Off Cool.
What?! How can this be? I WISH I’D NEVER KNOWN. This is not the man I married. The man I have known for 16 years streams movies like this:
and
Ancient Mysteries: Lost Castles of London.
He does not stream movies like this:
Am I supposed to pretend I never saw it? Go about my business as if nothing has changed? Or do I confront him? Maybe he wants me to confront him. Maybe he left it there on the Netflix queue so I would see and he could stop carrying this horrible secret burden.
I walked around with this awful knowledge for three days, giving him sidelong glances while my nerves frayed. During dinner he excitedly expounded on NASA’s new High Efficiency Artificial Photosynthesis Using a Novel Alkaline Membrane Cell and I thought, Is any of this real? Or is it a lie? A mere ruse? Would he rather be stuffing his face with walleye fingers at the Coon Lake Beach Booya?
After dinner I sat down on the couch with a small bowl of pomegranate-vanilla swirl frozen yogurt and flipped through channels, stopping on comedian Dane Cook doing a set about putting his address into a family watchdog website and discovering there were dozens of rapists and pedophiles in his neighborhood (hilarious!) The Husband sat at his computer chuckling along while scanning the pages of a wide-ruled notebook – his latest project is to scan all his engineering notes from college and grad school then keep the files with him at all times on an encrypted memory stick in case he ever needs to whip out the Bernoulli- Zel’dovich Equation.
During the commercial break I finally burst out, “I have to ask you something” and revealed my terrible secret with bated breath.
He
said …
“Oh. No. That was a mistake. A horrible mistake.”
“You accidentally watched a movie?”
“Yes. No. I was sitting here doing my scanning and I wanted to play something in the background and I thought it was the other guy. You know, the one who died.”
“No, Bill Hicks. When I saw it wasn’t him I let it play anyway. I mean, how bad could it be? But I could only take 10 minutes. It was pretty awful.”
“Oh. Well, that’s fine then. Okay.”
“What, do you think I secretly watch NASCAR? How long have you been worrying about this?”
Anyway, everything is fine and we’re still married.
A Brand New Creepy Guy
I worked the load-in for the Britney Spears Circus tour yesterday. Part of it anyway. The calls started at 3am, but fortunately I wasn’t on until 11. Thirty trucks. If you ever wonder why concert tickets cost so much, that’s why. Talk about a circus. It doesn’t matter how organized the road crew is, only so much stuff can fit in a room. Even a really big room. The Radio City Music Hall Rockettes show didn’t even have that many trucks and they were here for a week. And did something besides lip sync. Oh, did I say that?
Happily I was on Audio (anything but setting up the staging platforms please). Also happily the tour was put on by a French-Canadian production company. I love listening to the crew talk over radios in French. Although the only thing I remember from 2 semesters of French is “poulet”. Which means chicken. Haven’t had to use that on a call yet.
First the Audio crew was assigned to Short Round Guy who mumbled and gave us the wrong end of the feeder cable which we pulled for 50 feet or so. Twice. He wasn’t very popular. Then we were switched to Hot Tattooed French-Canadian Guy. He wasn’t flirty like Super Sexy French-France Guy from the Celine Dion tour (quote, “I love all women.”) But he called me “Miss” and touched my back once. In a gentlemanly kind of way.
During a sh0rt break, I hopped on top of a hamper to retie my boots. Out of nowhere Late 40s Creepy Man appeared and leaned on the case. He said, “If you ever need help tying your shoes, I could do that for you.”
What? I don’t want know what that’s about. Ewwww.
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