Target: Ready! Fire! Aim!
(Cute Redhead and I just had a big argument. She accused me, I accused her. We got all knotted up and wrapped around the axel and then laughed. Because I told her ‘You drive me absolutely up the wall. And I absolutely love you.’ And then she smiled (tried not to smile) and said, ‘Well…you drive me absolutely up the wall too.’ And that was that lol. So the time I was going to use to write today’s story was all used up by her Not Giving Me An Inch. So, here’s a fitting story of What It’s Really Like Around Here, straight out of A Beautiful Hell. I hope you enjoy it. Just like I’m about to enjoy my next gin and tonic.)
My wife is a scientist. A scientist. Not like with a white lab coat. Not like with beakers of toxic, bubbling liquid. Not like the Pantene scientist who agitate day in and day out over how to give your hair more body and bounce. She’s actually an environmental scientist. But not the tree-hugger kind sitting out in the woods bewailing the death of old-growth forests, as it were.
Her office is eight feet by six feet and, except for the few bright, happy photographs of me and the kids, a repository of boxes (I promise I am not making this up) stacked TO. THE. CEILING. Full of environmentally-scientific graphs and charts and models and Best Management Practices, and when I say stacked to the ceiling I mean just that: stacked to the ceiling.
I don’t get to her office very often because…well…because she’s sort of forbidden me from ever stepping foot inside a fifty foot perimeter. Or seventy-five foot perimeter. Or whatever the restraining order is all snitty about (something to do with my delivering flowers to her on our wedding anniversary and telling the receptionist to say they were from ‘her knight in tightie-whities.’) Whatever.
Now, normally, I would enlist the most discriminating and professional demeanor when I’m around this sort of thing…but…well…I just sort of can’t. I mean, I’m a Right Brain for God’s sake. And offices where they throw around jokes like “ha ha! did you hear the one about the biogeophysicalchemical cycle? it GOT A FLAT!” are just asking for it, if you ask me. And, to be honest, delivering the roses that day (one rose for each year of our waltz), but letting the receptionist take them back to her office instead of me was the zenith of self-control. And, yes, I really did tell her to say, “they’re from your knight in tightie-whities.” The receptionist thought this was hilarious. Wife did not. It went like this:
[ring] “Hi there, sweety! Happy anniversary! Did you like the flow—”
“I really wish you hadn’t done that.”
“…done what? You don’t like the flowers?”
“The flowers are beautiful.”
“Good. Count them. There’s one for each year symbolizing sixteen years of uninterrupted, perfect bliss and the blessed occasion of your life-long sentencing without parole.”
[she laughed] “Yeah, whatever. I just wish you hadn’t said ‘knight in tightie-whities.’”
“Yeah, whatever. Just be glad I didn’t walk back to your office singing Copacabana…because you know I would have if I wasn’t certain it would have given you an aneurysm.”
When she arrived home that afternoon, we commemorated the anniversary in that most romantic of styles that only the most romantic of couples do in that most romantic of ways: by going to Target.
So, my wife, the brilliant high-powered scientist and I, the brilliant high-powered Man, went to Target with one goal: to come home with a whole new ensemble of bedding, and shams, and pillows, and curtains, and linens, and aaAAAAaall the accoutrement required in order for the room to be “just right.”
It was maddening. She walked up and down aisle after aisle surveying this fabric, considering that comforter, comparing this bedskit, contrasting those curtains, and more or less weighing every possible color combination in the solar system. She was looking for the perfect look. She was looking for the right feel. She was looking for a bone marrow transplant as far as I was concerned, because this was impossible.
I can’t tell you how close I came to filling up the shopping cart with half the tools from Hardware Aisle, setting it on fire, and ramming it straight into Bedding Aisle.
The good news, though, is that we left the store with just the right assortment of Everything You Must Have To Make The Bed Look Just Right.
And she was happy. Happy. She, the high-powered scientist, had divested her high-powered mind of all things scientifically high-powered and relished in the womanly pleasure of fabric, and color, and textures, and matching, and contrasting, and happy, happy, happy. She was happy.
And then we got home and she hated it (you knew this was coming).
I should have known this was coming. I didn’t see this coming. What I did see, however, was my butt heading back to the store to switch out The Ugliest Comforter Ever Made for the Right One. Which I did. Cheerfuly (lie). I even called her from the store to make sure this was The Right One. It was.
And I brought it home. And she loved me for it. She loved me, and our marriage, and our sixteen years of uninterrupted, perfect bliss, and the way her Man cheerfully (lie) returned The Ugliest Comforter Ever Made and exchange it for The Right One. She loved me. She loved the new comforter. That is, until she looked at it and realized she hated that one, too.
So, on Third Trip Back to Stupid Store, her Man is no longer cheerfully (true) exchanging The Second Ugliest Comforter Ever Made for whatever the hell is behind Door Number Three. By now, Husband is eyeballing the lighter fluid in Camping Aisle and thinking he could light up the night sky like a Blitzkrieg and forget the whole damned thing.
But he doesn’t. He comes home with one she actually approved of. And good thing, because had he been forced to make Trip Number Four, he’d have also been forced to walk into her office the next day to witness her high-powered scientific mind implode under its own weight while he belted out Copacabana.
In his tightie-whities.
