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October 30, 2009

Mike Pound: 'Friendly' persuasion

Really, we both should have known better.

But after all these years, I think my wife should have known better more than I should have known better.

It was the day before we were to leave for a quick two-day trip out of town. On the trip, my wife wanted to drop off “a few things” for someone. Of course, when my wife used the phrase “a few things,” what she really meant was “almost everything currently in our house.”

The night before we were to leave, my wife had me help load about half of the “few things” into her car. The other half of the “few things” were to go into my car which I, since we weren’t leaving until the next day, was going to load — follow me here —the next day.

After we loaded her car, my wife drove it to the large, 24-hour retail store in our town. A few seconds after she left, she called me on my cell phone. My wife does that a lot, by the way. She leaves the house and then, roughly 45 seconds after leaving the house, calls me. Most of the time my wife calls to tell me that she forgot something or to ask if we need something like baking powder, or baking soda. I always get them confused.

This drives me crazy because, as I calmly tell my wife when she calls, “HOW THE *&%$#* WOULD I KNOW IF WE NEED BAKING POWDER OR BAKING SODA?”

“LOOK FOR IT,” my wife will say.

“I’M WATCHING THE GAME,” I will say.

“%$#^*,” my wife will say.

This time my wife wasn’t calling to ask if we needed baking powder, or baking soda. My wife called to say she would pick up our 11-year-old daughter, Emma, at play practice.

“If you want,” my wife then said, “you can go ahead and load the rest of the stuff in your car.”

“OK,” I said.

What I didn’t tell my wife was that I had no intention of loading the rest of the stuff into my car. The reason I had no intention of doing that? I didn’t want to.

See, clearly my wife prefaced her remarks about loading the rest of the stuff into my car with the words “If you want.”

I didn’t want. So I didn’t.

Later, when my wife arrived home and saw the stuff that was supposed to go into my car still sitting in our kitchen, she reacted calmly.

“WHY IS THIS *&&%% STUFF STILL SITTING HERE IN OUR KITCHEN?”

For my wife, that is reacting calmly.

What I did is calmly explain that I was planning on loading the stuff into my car the next day.

“BUT I ASKED YOU TO LOAD IT WHILE I WAS GONE,” my wife calmly replied.

“No you didn’t,” I said. “You said ‘If you want,’ and I didn’t want,” I said.

I will leave it up to your imagination as to what my wife said next. I just hope your imagination is rated R at the very least.

See, I think my wife should know me well enough, by now, to know that if she begins a request with the words “If you want,” I am likely not going to want to do what she wants me to do. Unless my wife says something like, “If you want, you can drink beer and watch football all day.”

My wife, however, thinks I should know that when she says “If you want,” she doesn’t mean “If you want.” What my wife means is “I want you to do this right *&&% now!!!”

Clearly, one of us is from Mars and one of us is from Venus.

I’m not sure which one of us is from which planet, because I always get them confused.

Sort of like baking powder and baking soda.

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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