I have discovered in my many over 40 years married to this two legged hurricane I refer to as my wife that I am not surprised by many out of the ordinary things. This might be because my life has been out of the ordinary ever since I can remember.
One day, early in our marriage when we lived in Idaho, I was heading out to a service call. I had just left the house and was traveling down the road when I noticed this woman running down the street towards me, she was carrying a small child under her arm. I quickly recognized that it was my beloved and our firstborn Marisa was dangling under her arm imitating a really good martini, which is always shaken, not stirred.
I stopped in the road and rolled down the window to ask her about this new exercise routine and also to inquire where exactly her car was. She shouted
“I ran out of gas down near the 7-11!”
I looked up the street and saw Angie’s car sitting in the turn lane several blocks away. To my horror, I also saw a Twin Falls police car pulled up behind it with his lights flashing. When I pulled up behind him I saw the officer walking slowly around the car while looking up and down the street for its driver. He saw me and walked over while I hastily explained it was my wife’s car and that she had run out of gas.
“Where is she then?” he queried.
I simply pointed back down the street and he saw her running back again, still dangling our daughter under one arm. He simply smiled and shook his head and then asked if I would like some help pushing the car across the street to the gas pumps not 100’ away at the 7-11. I thanked the kind officer when we stopped her car in front of the pump and I had the nozzle in the tank when Angie came running up.
I asked “Why didn’t you just push the car across the street to get gas?”
“Oh,” was her reply, this is always her reply to any common sense question presented to her.
Today , she is still doing this sort of thing but with the invention of the cell phone I now get several frantic calls a day, that is, when she remembers to take her phone, that is if it’s charged, that is, if she can find it in whatever safe place she put it.
As you can see, Angie’s solutions to life’s everyday problems are not the normal way people deal with the mundane things in life. As mentioned before, Angie is the kind of person who never throws anything away. She just relocates it to another place so she doesn’t see it and have to make a decision about what to do with it.
This also applies to the dry cleaning and stuff that she needs to return to other people. The most common “hiding place” Angie has for such things are the rear compartment of her SUV. The only problem is when she has to put something else in the back; she has to find another place for the contents that are already there.
This was the case with my suits that were supposed to go to the cleaners. She was again off on a very important mission of which she wasn’t quite yet sure of what it exactly was, but it was important anyway. She opened the back of the SUV and discovered it was full already of the dry cleaning she forgot to take in several weeks earlier.
“Now where am I going to put this?” she thought to herself.
Her solution was to put them in the driveway behind the travel trailer, right next to the garbage cans so that nobody, including herself, could see them.
For the next several weeks that was the hiding place of my suits until one day Angie walked behind the trailer and saw this pile of strange clothes laying there.
“What in the world is this?” she said to herself.
Upon further examination she realized it was the dry cleaning she had lost last month. Seeing as how she had already forgotten what she was on her way to do she decided to finally drop them off at the cleaners. She threw the clothing back into the rear of the SUV again and she was off on her mission. She took the clothes into the cleaners and deposited them on the counter. The lady behind the counter said she would be right with her and Angie started sorting through the pile to separate the different types of clothing. She began to notice many small white things in the clothes and thought to herself
“How did this rice get in here?”
It was then she noticed the “rice” was moving and realized that instead of the main staple of most of the third world she had brought hundreds of future flying pests into the dry cleaners. Maggots, to be exact, lots and lots of maggots.
You see, another unique habit my son’s have is that when they have exhausted their excuses and/or reasons for not taking the trash out, which probably took three times the effort than the requested task, they consider the job well done if said trash lands within a five foot circle of the container, never mind if the lid is open or not.
This added joy in my life resulted in the inclusion of these little rice imposters into our dry cleaning. Angie’s solution to this dilemma was to quickly shake out the clothing and sweep the wiggling masses on the floor where the clerk could not see them.
Remember Angie’s motto “Out of sight, out of mind”
With the preceding accounts in mind this next story should make a lot of sense. I had taken the boys to the movies and Angie had stayed home. When we got back around 11pm we heard Angie snoring through the bedroom walls. Angie is world famous for her ability to project the loudest known sound to man during her sleep. I have become accustomed to it but it is quite noticeable to others.
On one occasion I had to stop our #3 child, Ashley, from asphyxiating her in the middle of the night when she shared the hotel room with us during a trip. I had awakened to find Ashley hovering over her mother with a pillow in her hand and a wild look in her eyes.
I asked “What are you doing?”
“I can’t take it any more” she said “I haven‘t slept all night!”
I advised my beloved daughter that, although I could sympathize, I didn’t feel her actions were appropriate and that I didn’t think prison life would suit her very well, however, just to be on the safe side, I did promise to visit regularly.
But then, I regress. Back to the story:
As the boys and I entered the house I thought it would be best to at least let Angie know we were home. If she is not advised of the presence of others in the house it could very well result in one of the infamous “naked mother” sightings that has shocked and scarred many an unsuspecting visitor.
As I opened the bedroom door I was greeted with one of the most unique sights I’ve witnessed to date. The lights were on, the TV was blaring and there, sprawled out in the most un-lady like fashion possible (here the word “splayed” comes to mind) was my beloved wife. The lower area of her anatomy was thankfully covered by the sheet, the upper half, however, was not.
To add to this disturbing vision was that right next to her, on my side of the bed, laid our eighty five pound, boxer mix, Jack, snoring loudly and also sprawled out in the popular “splayed” position of the evening in all his thankfully neutered glory. The first thought that occurred to me was that something very, very wrong had transpired in this room.
The second thought that occurred to me was “Where’s my camera?!”
Sadly, before I could act on my idea the mother of my children, bride of my youth and living proof that gravity has severe affects on us all over time awoke with a ladylike snort.
“What’s wrong?” was her barely intelligible question.
“Nothing my dear” I replied, “everything is just as normal as it always is here.”