I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love men. Tall men, short men, and men who wear pearls and sparkley skirts in karaoke bars. Generally speaking, men are a good thing.
That said, I must confess that I don't understand them sometimes. Sure, that's a little cliche, but a little cliche in moderation never hurt anybody. And by the way, can I use the word cliche if I can't find that little slanty thing that hovers over the e on my keyboard?
Mr. Man is no exception. I love the man terrible, but sometimes I want to poke him between the eyes with a sharp stick. How can one man be so intelligent and yet so completely goofy at the same time?
The other day I'm sitting here in the home office from hell, pounding on the keyboard, completely engrossed in my work when Man walks in the door and stands silently staring at me.
"What do you need?" I say, trying to keep my train of thought on track and stay focused on the task at hand.
"Do you know how far Saskatchewan is from here?"
We live in Kansas. Since when do we care how far Saskatchewan is from here? Are we about to take a spontaneous road trip to Canada to buy some of that low priced Canadian 2% milk?
So I stop what I'm doing and ask very sweetly, "Why in the name of all that is holy do you want to know how far Saskatchewan is from our house??"
"Oh, I already know. I just wanted to know if you knew."
I'm guessing he had an unusually high fever as a child.
And then there is the toilet paper issue. Although Mr. Man spends much of his life protecting our country's nuclear interests from the threat of terrorism, he still is simple minded enough to believe that toilet paper gets on the little round gold thingie by means of some kind of magic that possibly involves tiny trolls.
I know this because he has never once in our entire relationship changed the toilet paper roll. Even if I put a new roll of TP underneath the dispenser so that when one runs out, there will be another roll right there, he still won't change it. And, it's not like he doesn't have the time. The man spends more time in the bathroom than could possibly be necessary in any situation and I'm including situations that might occur after eating leftover Mexican food that I forgot to refrigerate. Surely he could have figured out the mechanics of the TP dispenser by now.
"Honey, I can't change it," he says. "It's what the trolls live for. It would be like stealing their pot of gold."
While I'm venting here, Mr. Man has some other little quirks that strike me as odd. For example, he is the only man I've ever met that uses words like, "whomever" and "awry" in bed. I'm not kidding. Even when he's trying to convince me that I really don't have a headache, he can't help himself. He has a big vocabulary and he's not afraid to use it.
I blame college.
But the thing that I find most perplexing about Mr. Man is his taste in music. He is a middle-aged white boy from Kansas with absolutely no rhythm who also happens to be a rap freak. We live in a quiet little neighborhood with senior citizens on either side of us. I'll be in the back of the house, picking up his dirty socks that are all rolled up in little yucky balls, and I can hear him coming down the street. His car stereo is turned up so loud, it sounds like he finally just threw out his CD's and hired Nelly and Kid Rock to ride around with him and do live concerts.
While other men his age are slowly starting to hike their pants north, his pants are making their way south. I really think that by the time he's forty-one, his pants will finally be around his knees.
Oh well, what are you gon'na do? I love the guy, but I'll never understand him. I guess I should just accept the fact that when we are way old and wrinkled and in a nursing home together, I will still be married to a wannabe rapper that can't change the toilet paper roll.
I can just hear him now. "Whomever those bitches and ho's are that were supposed to change my Depends an hour ago have not arrived. I suspect their schedules must have gone awry. Would you summon someone to help me tie my Air Force Ones please?"
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
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2 comments:
My husband is older than your husband and also listens to rap.
Middle aged crisis?
Comment not related at all to your blog. Sorry!!! Fellow Kentuckian, born and raised in Madisonville and moved to Louisville at 23. I can't find an e-mail address on your web site or on your blog and wanted to let you know that I was in that shop you "visited" in Louisville. It was a required visit for a class I was taking at Bellarmine College. I found the story in your blog archives but there was no area for leaving a comment. Too bad, I have my own story to tell in regards to that little store.
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