If you were to walk into our house, you would quite likely bump into a dining-room chair.
It’s not that our house is small, or that our dining-room table is huge, or our door opens into our dining room, it’s that my wife is — to use a technical word — “crazy.”
Last week my sister-in-law Vicki called my wife and mentioned that she was getting rid of three dining-room chairs and wanted to know if we could use them. My wife said that we could. The only problem, of course, is that we don’t have room for three additional chairs.
Wife: But they match our other chairs and the table.
Me: In the sense that they are both made out of wood.
Wife: FINE!!!
When my wife said “FINE,” even though I should have known better, I figured that the matter was settled and that we wouldn’t be taking possession of three chairs that we didn’t need. See, I’m a veteran husband and I should know by now that when my wife says “FINE” she means the exact opposite. Now if my wife says “fine,” she actually means fine. But if she says “FINE” and stomps off, she doesn’t really mean fine.
I somehow forgot that when we had our chair discussion, and on Thursday night Vicki rang our doorbell and told me that she had our chairs.
“What chairs?” I asked.
Vicki gave me a look that said: “What? She didn’t tell you?”
I called my wife and told her that Vicki had our chairs. My wife gave me a look that said: “What? Didn’t I tell you?”
I gave my wife a look that said: “(Very bad word).”
I should point out that I actually like the new dining-room chairs and they do actually sort of match our current dining-room chairs. The new chairs are a little bit lighter in color but I figure before long they will get darker.
We have pets.
My objection to taking possession of the new chairs is that we already have enough dining-room chairs.
“But we can use these when we have more people over for dinner,” my wife said.
“I don’t want more people over for dinner,” I said.
“Too bad,” my wife said.
My wife ends as many conversations with me by using the words “too bad” as she does “FINE,” only when my wife says “too bad” she actually means too bad. As in: “It’s too bad that I’m not going to pay attention to what you say and I’m going to do exactly what I want so you better get used to it buddy, because this is the way your sad, pathetic life is going to be from now on.”
My wife gets a lot out of the words “too bad.”
When I asked my wife where she planned to put the new dining-room chairs, she said that she would find a place for them and for me not to worry.
I immediately started to worry.
My wife is not so good at finding places for things. My wife will come home with 12 things we don’t need, set them on our kitchen table and say: “I’m just going to set them here until I can find a place for them.”
Three years later, the 12 items we didn’t need will have melded into the kitchen counter and have to be removed with a blowtorch. To help reduce the amount of clutter in our house, my wife has started putting things in scrapbooks. What my wife does is set a big pile of stuff that she should throw away into a laundry basket and say that she will only keep the stuff in the basket until she has time to put them in a scrapbook. Except, she never has time to put the stuff into a scrapbook.
If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to come over to our house and see for yourself.
Just watch out for the chairs.
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