A little more than a week ago, my wife told me that we needed a new chair in our family room.
When I asked my wife why we needed a new chair in our family room when we already had what I considered to be plenty of furniture, my wife told me the chair was for me.
“Why do I need a chair?” I asked.
“So you have a place to read in the family room,” my wife said.
I pointed out to my wife that I like to read in our living room. See, we don’t use our living room much. Our living room is not really a living room. Our living room is more of a “don’t use it, so it won’t get messy and we won’t have to clean it, so when people drop by unexpectedly we can pretend that we do use it and that we are actually very neat people” room.
My wife said that she thought I would be more comfortable reading in a new chair in the family room.
“That way we’ll be together,” my wife said.
“But you will be watching TV while I’m reading,” I said.
“Right,” my wife said.
I tried to explain that I didn’t want to try to read in the same room where someone was watching TV, but my wife was already talking to our 14-year-old daughter about shopping for a new chair. Then my wife announced that she and Emma would go chair shopping on Sunday morning and asked if I wanted to go.
I told my wife that she and Emma should go and have fun, and I would stay home and guard the house.
“And watch football,” my wife said.
“Oh, right, I forgot,” I said.
Five hours later, my wife and Emma returned from their shopping trip without a chair. My wife said that she and Emma found a chair they liked but didn’t buy it because it was too big for the family room.
“That’s too bad,” I said, even though I really didn’t care. Over the years I have found that saying “that’s too bad” or “that’s great” when I really don’t care is all right because it sounds much better than “I really don’t care.”
However, my wife did say she thought the chair would fit in our bedroom. When I pointed out that we already had a chair in our bedroom, my wife said we could move it downstairs and put the new chair in our bedroom.
“But I’m not sure the chair in our bedroom will fit down here either. So we need to carry it downstairs to see if it fits,” my wife said.
I seemed to remember that carrying the chair up to our bedroom the first time was sort of a pain in the Limbaugh, which told me that carrying it back downstairs just to see if it would fit in our family room would be a double pain in the Limbaugh, so I told my wife that I didn’t want to do it.
My wife told me that it didn’t matter what I wanted or didn’t want to do. My wife told me that she would move the chair downstairs with or without me. My wife said that, knowing that I knew she couldn’t move the chair by herself. What both of us knew would happen is that my wife would make a big production about trying to move the chair herself until she drove me crazy enough to get up and help her.
Since I wanted to watch the rest of my football game, I decided to shorten the process. I told my wife I would help move the chair as long as we didn’t have to move it again. My wife agreed. Together we carried the chair from our bedroom down to our family room.
“There,” my wife said. “That looks great.”
“That’s too bad,” I said as I returned to watching my football game.
“What?” my wife asked.
“I mean, that’s great,” I said.
See, it sounds much better than “I really don’t care.”
Local News
Mike Pound: Not giving a care about a chair
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Hatred, resentment and retribution fueled bloody encounter at Rader’s Farm
Members of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry regiment had been in Jasper County in large numbers on previous foraging missions. Coming from their outpost in modern-day Baxter Springs, Kan., the armed former slaves in Union uniforms had entered the property and homes of white residents to take their food or other useful supplies.
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Ceremony to mark push for Civil War memorial
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Disaster response team to hold tornado memorial ride
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