JOPLIN, Mo. —
When I realized what my wife had done, I thought carefully about how to approach the situation.
My wife had done something sort of dumb. The sort of the thing that would make her mad when she realized what she had done. Not at me, mind you, but at herself.
But the thing that my wife did also made me want to laugh. That’s why I had to think carefully about my approach. See, she would be mad at me if I laughed.
And I really wanted to.
On Christmas night, after our company left, my wife made several kinds of turkey soups using the carcasses of the turkey I roasted and the turkey I smoked.
My wife does this every year, and she freezes the soup so we can have it later. I like my wife’s turkey soups. I particularly like her smoked turkey soup.
While my wife made the soups, I sat in our family room and yelled out encouraging things to her. Thinks like “Hey, how’s that turkey soup coming?” Or “Boy that soup smells good. Is it done yet?”
At one point, my wife mentioned that there didn’t seem to be as much roast turkey as there had been in the past. My wife said that she deboned the turkey carcass and added the turkey meat, but the soup didn’t seem as thick as it normally is and that she was going to have to add some of the smoked turkey to the regular turkey soup.
“That’s nice,” I said, even though I had no idea what my wife was talking about.
Note to rookie husbands: When you don’t have a clue what your wife is talking about, it’s best to say, “That’s nice.”
Later, my wife asked me to help her carry the Tupperware bowls she had filled with turkey soup down to our freezer in the basement. Even though I had already helped by yelling encouragement, I agreed to help carry the soup to the basement.
What can I say? It’s the way I was raised.
On Wednesday morning, I came downstairs to get some coffee. I opened the refrigerator looking for something to eat.
“Wow, I guess I could nibble on that plate of deboned turkey,” I said to myself.
Then I asked myself why there was a plate of deboned turkey in the refrigerator.
“That turkey is supposed to be in the soup,” I said to myself. Then I started laughing.
“Ooh, she’s not going to be happy about this,” I said to myself.
Evidently, what my wife had done was debone the turkey, put the turkey on a plate, put the plate in the refrigerator and then forgot about it.
Did I go upstairs and say something like: “Hahahaha, hey remember when you said that there wasn’t enough turkey in your turkey soup? Well, hahahaha, the reason there wasn’t enough turkey was because you left the turkey in the refrigerator. Isn’t that a riot?”
I wasn’t sure, but something told me that wasn’t the way to approach the situation.
The other approach would be to take the turkey out of the refrigerator, throw it away and never speak of the incident again.
But what’s the fun in that?
Still another approach was to not say a thing and let my wife discover the turkey in the refrigerator. But this approach has a few complications, the first being my wife might throw a conniption.
Also, there was the question of how I would react when my wife discovered the turkey. Would I be able to hold in my laughter? I think not.
So I went upstairs, approached my wife and said: “Did you mean to leave a plate of turkey in the refrigerator?”
And then I laughed.
Hey, she wanted to get mad at me for something. It might as well have been something I enjoyed.
DO YOU HAVE AN IDEA for Mike Pound’s column? Call him at 417-623-3480, ext. 7259, or email him at mpound@joplinglobe.com. Follow him on Twitter @mikepoundglobe.
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