Mike Pound: Leaving is apparently difficult to do

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January 29, 2010

Anonymous The Joplin Globe Fri Jan 29, 2010, 10:58 AM CST

I’ve been spending a lot of time in my car lately.

I haven’t been driving my car. I’ve just been spending a lot of time in my car.

My wife had some sort of medical procedure a while back. I probably should have asked my wife what sort of medical procedure she had a while back, but I’ve never been the nosy type.

The only thing I know is that my wife isn’t supposed to drive for a while, which leaves me with two choices:

No. 1: Tell my wife to enjoy the walk.

No. B: Spend all my free time driving my wife around town.

If you are a male and you guess that I opted for No. 1, I think we could assume that you are a single male. For the rest of you, I’m confident that you guessed I picked No. B, which is what I did.

But I wasn’t happy about it.

My wife is one of those people who have some sort of genetic defect that compels them to talk to everyone they see. When I accompany my wife to the large, 24-hour, retail store in our town it often takes her 30 minutes just to enter the store.

My wife once spent 17 minutes talking to a shopping cart. Well, I think my wife was talking to a shopping cart, but I could be wrong because I wasn’t with her at the time. I was already in the store and halfway to the beer aisle.

I’m a veteran husband, which means I have earned the right to keep walking while my wife keeps talking. So I do, unless of course, my wife stops to talk to a member of a Swedish Bikini Cheerleading team. I wouldn’t want Sweden to get upset with us. The last thing we need is a bunch of angry Swedes threatening us with yodels of mass destruction.

Swedes yodel, don’t they? Or, I’m I thinking about the Swiss? Probably doesn’t matter. To me, Sweden and Switzerland are pretty much like North and South Dakota.

Early in our marriage, I used to stay with my wife she when stopped to talk. But I also used to open the car door for her.

When we would go parties back then, it would take us three hours to leave. I finally got to the point where, when we arrived at a party, I would immediately start trying to leave so I could get home before midnight.

Host: Hello, thanks so much for coming.

Me: We had a great time. Good night.

My wife takes a while to do things, is what I’m trying to say. That’s why I’ve have been spending a lot of time in my car lately.

The other night I drove my wife to pick up our 12-year-old daughter, Emma, at dance class. Emma’s dance class ends at 9 p.m.

The way I figured it we could leave our house at 8:56 p.m. arrive at Emma’s dance class at 9 p.m. and be home by 9:04, meaning I would have only missed five minutes, at most, of the Kansas/Missouri basketball game. Instead, this is what happened:

8:40: At wife’s insistence, we left the house.

8:44: Arrived at dance class.

8:44:30: Wife entered dance class. I stayed in car.

9:45: Wife and Emma entered car. Woke me up.

9:49: Arrived home. I turned on TV see that the basketball score was something like KU 279, MU 4.

“Did you miss much of your game?” my wife asked.

In response I wanted to say, “&%$@# yes, I missed the whole @#$%$# game.”

But I didn’t. Like I said, I’m a veteran husband.

Address correspondence to Mike Pound, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802, or via e-mail at mpound@joplinglobe.com.

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Mike Pound: Leaving is apparently difficult to do

Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr wants the city to distribute weather radios to all Joplin homes that don’t have one. That’s 11,000 radios. Do you think that’s a good use of $300,440?

Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr wants the city to distribute weather radios to all Joplin homes that don’t have one. That’s 11,000 radios. Do you think that’s a good use of $300,440?

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