Jim is on vacation in the swamps of the Florida Panhandle, he has been outflanked by female relatives...
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Wife: Chairs
Me: Wha...?
Wife: (repeating statement, adding emphasis) Chairs. We need chairs.
Me: Wha...?
Wife (speaking slower and louder so that the stupid male will understand): We need to make sure we have enough chairs.
Me: Wha...?
Wife (Sounding exasperated at the obvious density of husband): We. Need. Chairs. For the 4th of July. For the fireworks.
Me: Uh...OK. Isn't there like...uh...ground people could sit on?
Wife (through gritted teeth): We need to make sure we have enough chairs for people to sit on. We're going to the park. To watch the fireworks. On the 4th.
Me: It's just fireworks in the park.
Wife: Things need to be planned out.
Me: OK. I'll go count chairs.
(Now you would think that any woman that would plan days in advance, at somebody else's house, to make sure we have enough chairs for people to sit on, despite the fact that the park is full of nice green grass and picnic tables and car trunks and etc, would plan everything down to the finest detail.)
Some time later:
Wife: Uh oh.
Me: la la la la lalalalalalalalaa.
Wife: I said uh oh.
Me: Damn. You know, it's not the heat so much as the humidity.
Wife: sigh
Me (relenting): Is this about the chairs. Are we short a couple?
Wife: I think I forgot the power cord for my work computer.
Me: You?
Wife: Shut. Up.
Me: Exactly, that's what I'm saying, it's the friggin humidity...
Sometime even later:
Me: Say, Jimmy and I are going to run over to the Aviation Museum. I think I'll go over the new Garcon Point bridge and through Gulf Breeze to Pensacola. Mind if I borrow your TomTom GPS thingie?
Wife: Sure. Here you go.
Me: Where's the car charger?
Wife: Well, see here's the thing...
Me: You didn't bring the car charger?
Wife: No. I figured I could charge it off the USB port on my computer.
Me: Your work computer?
Wife: Yes.
Me: The one you don't have an AC adapter for?
Wife: You're walking a very thin line here, Buster.
Me: Exactly. Does the humidity seem worse today? because it seems worse to me...
Sometime even more later:
Wife: You know, we need to make sure we have enough chairs.
Me: For the 4th of July. I hear ya. I picked up a couple extra at the Exchange when Jimmy and I were on the Navy Base today just to make sure we had enough. Because I love you.
Wife: I suppose we could just sit on the grass...
You like to live dangerously, don't you?
ReplyDeleteThank god I'm not a lesbian.
ReplyDeleteI understood those conversations.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I'll share this post with any of the women in my life.
Because I like my life.
I. Will. Totally. Have. My. Wife. Read. This. Post.
ReplyDeleteBut not today.
Jim, your wife wasn't a Marine perchance was she?
ReplyDeleteHey, I'm doing the fireworks thing from the roof-top of a condo complex near Centennial Olympic Park.
ReplyDeleteHave friends that live in that community and their loft building always did a bbq. This year it's a catered neighborhood event with a nominal admission charge to cover the food and raise money for the dog park they're installing in a green space area.
So, since I don't have to help my friend cook or set up (ie, worry about enough chairs & booze) this year, I'm just going for the view!!
WendyB_09
Hmmm. I don't see anything bothersome, weird, or upsetting about your wife's point-of-view.
ReplyDeleteWhat?
What's the problem?
ReplyDeleteCassie
GF started a conversation the other night about how we could have a big platter of chicken wings and maybe a spiral cut ham and some of that potato salad I like and some vegetables and dip and...
ReplyDeleteAnd my first thought was, we've already had dinner haven't we? And my second thought was, that'd be an awful lot of food for us to have anyway. And my third thought was, "what the fuck is she talking about"?
Luckily, I've learned (contrary to what GF would tell you), not to voice the first stupid thing that pops into my head.
Eventually, I said, "We're talking about your mother's birthday party, aren't we?" I was inordinately proud of myself.
Look, look at Nathan. See, we can be trained!
ReplyDeleteNow if the women in our lives could just get us to stop peeing in the back yard.
Also, be glad you've got fireworks to go sit on the lawn, most of the ones around us are being cancelled (some in larger cities are finding private sponsorship to go on). We might all just gather in our chairs in the usual spots and watch the stars (because they'll have turned off the street lights for lack of payment by then - just joking).
I recognize that kind of conversation. 'Cept when my wife gets made she says stuff in Korean that I don't understand but sounds really scary.
ReplyDelete...more than twenty years and she still won't translate some of them phrases to English for me...
With apologies to any Asians visiting...pretty much anything in an Asian language tends to sound angry to me.
ReplyDeleteI was setting up a shoot in Chinatown with a translator once and after explaining what we'd be doing, a store owner went on at length in Mandarin with little white flecks developing at the corners of his mouth. I'm sure the translator took some liberties, but she told me he had said, "I have a delivery coming on Tuesday. As long as he gets here, I don't care about the rest."