The How-Not-To Guide to Parenting and Marriage (14 page)

64. THE EVER-FORTHCOMING GARAGE SALE.

There are few combinations of words that bring me more grief, than when the words "garage" and "sale" are put together. Unless of course, the words "I'm going to have a" are preceding them, in which case, the grief turns to despair.

Now, I love going TO a garage sale, and finding bargains on things that make my wife groan when I bring them home. But when my wife decides it is time to have one ourselves, is when I have the problem.

Our basement and my beloved shed have been slowly converted over to storage for things that will be sold in the ever-forthcoming garage sale. Things that we should have thrown away long ago. Broken thin
gs. Things that are stained . . . . Or smell.

She has tried for two consecutive garage sales, to sell a single left tennis shoe.
Its mate was burnt beyond saving in a gasoline fire during the great hornet nest battle of '04.

I ask her, "who on earth is going to buy one left tennis shoe? Do you think there is someone out there who was also battling hornets with gas, and has only a right shoe of the same size and brand?"

I get no response.

There are clothes for sale that have holes, and large stains on them.

"Who is going to buy a polo shirt with a golf cart tire stain across the front?" I ask her, rubbing my chest from the painful reminder.

"
That’s why it’s only five cents" she replies in a nauseatingly pleasant garage sale voice.

"So I give up space in my shed to store this shirt all year, so you can sell it for five cents?" I ask her.

"Well, I'd take an offer of three cents" she replied. This answer confirms my suspicions that garage sale mania turns my normally quite-intelligent wife, into a blithering idiot.

She gets the girls involved too. They have their own table full of junk to sell. Their heads filled with ideas of how they will spend all the money they are going to make. They have dolls with no arms, a dried up bottle fingernail polish, and a Monopoly game that is missing all the money.

And every year, at least one of my daughter's will draw a picture of a horse or dolphin to try and sell in the garage sale. And every year my wife insists that I give my neighbor Robert money to buy the drawings so the girls are not disappointed that their drawings didn't get sold . . . . Drawings that they put ten dollar price tags on.

There is an office chair that is missing the back rest and a wheel, that has been featured in ten consecutive
garage sales without being sold, but at the end of every sale, it is taken back downstairs to await next year's sale, as if it were a fine wine that will get better with each passing year.

A card table has also been converted into a beverage stand that offers lemonade that is either unbearably weak, or so potent and sour, that one cannot drink it wi
thout winking and making “kissy sounds” involuntarily.

The
worst part of the whole ordeal is the final counting of profits. My wife and two daughters gather at the kitchen table. With much giggling and excitement, they dump out the large change pile, and few crumpled bills that make up this year's take. They sort and count for half an hour until. . . . . .Drum roll . . . . . Seventeen dollars and forty six cents.

We have saved and stored mounds of ga
rbage all year, sat for endless customerless hours, and haggled with old ladies over the price of a ten cent, half burnt oven mitt . . . . . FOR SEVENTEEN DOLLARS AND FORTY SIX CENTS . . . . . . Enough to buy a large pizza and a two liter of Coke.

I thro
w my hands up in despair, grumble to myself, and then begin taking the leftovers back downstairs to await next year's sale.

65.
HOW DARE YOU BOWL WITH MY WIFE!

When my children were younger, my wife and I developed certain code words and phrases so that we could communicate about different things without them being aware. Our code word for.....well, making romance, was "bowling".

Such as, "Let's put the kids to bed early so we can go "bowling (wink, wink)".

Or, "Last night's bowling was spectator!"

Over the years, many of the other code words and phrases were abandoned or became obsolete, but "bowling" stuck with us for some reason, even after our girls had become teenagers.

Last year, we were at a family reunion. As the day's activities and dinner began to wind down, different family members scattered about the house, some watching TV, others deciding to play board games. I was exhausted from all of the getting along with family, so I plopped down on a couch next to my wife to relax.

With a sinister grin, my wife quietly asked me, "Sooo, do you feel like sneaking off to do some bowling?"

As tempting as it sounded, I answered, "I'm sorry, my love, I'm just too wiped out."

"I'd love to go bowling with you!" came a voice from across the room. My wife's uncle Gerald had apparently overheard the exchange.

Now normally, this would not be a problem, but somehow, in my overly tired state, my mind failed to convert "bowling" back to the real meaning.....bowling. With my flawed interpretation, the comment seemed extremely inappropriate.

I gave Gerald a frown for even joking about "bowling" with my wife.....his niece.

"No, I'm serious", he continued, "We can go bowling right now! Just let me get out of this shirt and tie."

Now I was angry. It was inappropriate enough when I thought uncle Gerald was joking about "bowling" with my wife, his niece, but now it seemed as if he was actually serious!

As I opened my mouth to verbally assault my psycho uncle-in-law, a voice came from the other side of room.

"I would love to go bowling with the two of you, if you don't mind!
” said Lynn, my wife's cousin.

"That sounds great! The three of us can just bowl the night away!" came Gerald's reply. But he scarcely had time to finish his sentence before I lit into him.

"YOU SICKO!" I screamed, "HOW DARE YOU TRY TO GET MY WIFE TO GO "BOWLING" WITH YOU!"

Sounding defensive, Gerald added, "Well geez, you can go bowling too if you want, or if you're too tired, you can just watch, while the three of us bowl."

The limit of my patience had expired........ I punched Uncle Gerald squarely in the nose.

"OOWWWW" screamed Gerald as he fell back in a chair holding a bloody nose.

Chaos exploded in the room.

"WHAT ON EARTH WAS THAT FOR?" my wife demanded.

"HE WAS TRYING TO GET YOU TO GO "BOWLING" WITH HIM!......AND LYNN TOO!...... and he even has the audacity to say I can watch!" I pleaded.

My wife opened her mouth as if to yell at me some more, and then stopped. For a second or two she looked off into space, as if deep in thought. Then her eyes widened and she said, "You idiot..."

"What?" I asked, amazed that she was not even slightly grateful that I had defended her honor.

"He wants to go BOWLING with me, NOT "BOWLING" you idiot!"

Somewhere in my brain, the right wires started making the right connections, and it all became clear........ Uncle Gerald wanted to go bowling..... like with a bowling ball and pins..... Not "bowling".

My face reddened and I began to sweat as I
put the whole scene together in my mind. I now had to not only apologize to Uncle Gerald for giving him a bloody nose, but also endure the embarrassment of explaining to everyone how and why I had mistakenly thought that he wanted to sleep with my wife.

When I had finished my pathetic explanation, and apology, Gerald looked at me with fire in his eyes and asked, "So you actually thought I was propositioning your wife?"

"Umm....well...yes"

"
And when I said that Lynn could go too, you thought..."

"Ummm, welll.....

Before I could finish my answer, Gerald punched me squarely in the nose.

A few years have passed since the whole ordeal. We all laugh about it whenever it is brought up, which makes me glad. But I have noticed that whenever the word bowling is used, it is immediately followed by phrase, "the kind of bowling you do at a bowling alley".

66. ODE TO MY COUCH

I love you, couch

You never mind if I slouch,

Nor seem to fret or much care,

If I sit in my underwear.

Your cracks hide the chips,

That fall from my lips.

Your cushions filter the gas,

That I sometimes must pass.

Like a baby in the womb,

Or a mummy in a tomb,

On you I can lay,

And nap in the day.

I love you couch.

67. HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL?

A book that was popular a few years back, seemed to think that many of the problems that can arise between a husband and wife, were caused by men and women coming from different planets. In fact the very title of the book stated it clearly,
Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus.
I admit that I didn't actually read the book (because I don't like to read things), but the title of the book pretty much said it all. Due to the books popularity, I assume that many people just accept this theory. Again, I didn't read it, and I am not aware of it being made into a movie yet, but blaming our marriage problems on different alien ancestry seems a bit absurd to me.

So, feeling troubled by the book's conclusions, I have been doing a great deal of thinking and research on the topic of marriage. Well, actually more thinking than research because I don't like reading things. But my conclusions to all this thinking and researching is what I consider to be the root cause of nearly all marital problems.

"WHAT IS IT?" you ask, "TELL ME!" you say.

The answer is really quite simple. I'm surprised that no one has figured it out before..............

The problem with most marriages, is that women are more emotional than men.

This answer came to me after years of consideration.........well, that and my wife constantly asking me how I "feel" about different things.

For the longest time, I really wasn't picking up on the whole feelings thing. If a child was in trouble at school, or got a bad report card, the inevitable question would be asked, "how do you feel about this?"

For a lack of a better answer, or even understanding the question, I would say something like, "hungry", or "itchy". I never really realized that my wife actually put stock in the whole feelings thing. For me, trouble at school, or a bad report card meant grounded for a year..... end of story......now let's see what's on tv.

But now that I've identified that this preoccupation with feelings and emotions are a large part of what's wrong with our marriage, I can begin to take steps to resolve the problem.

The natural solution was to simply tell my wife not to be so emotional over things, but this didn't seem to work out as well as I had hoped. More often than not, it resulted in her getting even more emotional. At one point, she even threw a jar of green olives at me, leaving me with quite a goose egg on the forehead. So the only other option was to roll with it, and try to come up with better answers for the question of how I feel about things.

My first attempt at this was after a rather long and loud argument about me keeping a container of live leeches (for fishing) hidden in the lettuce drawer of the refrigerator, after she had previously asked me not to. As the argument dragged on, she told me that she thought that my keeping them hidden in the fridge was deceitful, and disrespectful of her wishes...... and then she asked, "How does that make you feel?"

Trying to appease her thirst for emotion, I answered, "regretful....... I'm regretful that I didn't hide them behind my gallon sized jar of hot sauce where you would have been less likely to find them"

Luckily for me, the styrofoam container of leeches was much less painful than a jar of olives when hurled against my forehead.

As a further effort to restore harmony to our marriage, I began to look up words in the dictionary to describe how different situations made me feel.

Our auto insurance premium going up made me feel……..agonized.

My daughter giving us attitude over cleaning her room made me feel.....begrudged.

Hurting my wife's feelings made me feel.......precarious.

Some of the odd looks that my wife gives me after these answers, tells me that they may not always be what she was looking for, but she seems to give me credit for the effort. Our marriage has gotten a bit smoother since my expressing my feelings.

I think I'm on the right path, but I still get stumped by the whole emotions thing sometimes. The other day my wife stated that, "I just feel like bursting out in tears, and I don't know why!"

To which I replied, "should I call you an ambulance?" ......... this is not the correct response.