Chapter 17: While You Were Out

I'll just bet, you, dear reader, were expecting to read about womens secrets in this chapter. I don't know any, I'm an old man with a pen. I don't understand, can't understand, will never understand, women.

As an example, dishes. She said, "would you, please, do the dishes while I'm out with my mom." Pretty straight forward, huh?

I had all kinds of compliments, awards even, for my dishwashing abilities during my 14 year tenure as chief bottle and dish washer at the Summer Session Archaeological Digs.

"Nope, you can't volunteer to do the dishes, Hairy has that covered, pick something else. Why? Because we've never had a single case of dysentery in the blank number summers he's been washing the dishes." That's something even the grad students can't say. Great dishwasher!

So, I said, "sure, I'll do them."

She proceeded to give me 200+ directions on how one does dishes, and I paid attention, even though I knew the way she was telling me to do them was NOT the way she does them. (She does them exactly the way I won awards for washing dishes.) So, I followed instructions, (I'm a good husband, I sit to pee, I never leave the seat up, I bring home my pay check and hand it over, I've been well trained by my mother and first wife. Never ask me to pay for something, I have no money, she has it.) washed them exactly as instructed, air dried them, put them away as designated, cleaned both sinks, sanitized the stovetop, picked up my book and fell asleep reading.

"I thought I told you how to do the dishes!" as she stormed into the bedroom.

Notice the difference between "would you, please, do the dishes while I'm out with my mom." and "I thought I told you how to do the dishes!" That's like the difference between black and white. She didn't like the way I did them, even though I followed her instructions, TO - THE - LETTER!

I received a second set of demands for the dishes, completely different from the first set, which, by the way, induced a case of Montezuma's Revenge like you wouldn't believe.

Tuesday is Momday. Her mother drags her off shopping, kicking and screaming, "I don't wanna go!", yeah, like THAT's ever going to happen, every MomdayTuesday: Goodwill, Blind Thrift, Salvation Army, and not just one branch store ... EVERY branch store. Then it's Big Lots, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, WalMart, Sams Club, and all the permanent Garage and Yard Sales, she even goes to Northern Tool and Harbor Freight, SOB, whine, cry ... she goes to MY MANTOOL stores, "To save you a trip."

The second set of dish instructions produced the same result ... sorta. I followed her DEMANDS to the letter, again. "That's not how I told you to do the dishes!" completely eliminating please, thank you and the magic word "asked" none of which wordswitches were featured in the second set of "DISH RULES."

MomdayTuesday came by a third time. A new set of dish rules but this time the dishes have been left since Sunday, when we had La-gag-ya, with all it's horrendous features: Burnt on cheese, tomato sauce, and pasta in GLASS. I got it spotless. All the dishes sparkled, they were perfectly organized on freshly sanitized shelves in scrubbed clean cabinets. The silver was neatly aligned in it's tray, the ovenracks had been CHIPPED of centuries of burned on spills. I done gooder! Hell's Kitchen would love to look this good! There is no possible complaint she can have. NONE!!

"That's not the way I want you to do these dishes, filthy, disgusting, look here, a fingerprint!(hers, just put there) You have to do better than that."

I don't do dishes at my house now. "I've done the very best I can, If you're not happy, DO IT YOURSELF!" She doesn't understand, she doesn't get it. "Do the laundry this way."

"Nope, do it yourself."

"You never help around the house."

"Every time you ask me to do something new, you follow the request with 250 pages of instructions. I can't do it to suit you ... do it yourself."

I haven't changed the oil in her car in 15 months.(because she has instructions) She's been asked not to bring her car back for service at every Quickie Lube in town.(giving instructions to the mechanic) She's had the same sparkplugs for 12 years.(instructions)

Hey, I just discovered a "womans secret". Can you guess what it is?

Oh Shit, she just came and asked me to go start her car. (not been started since Christmas)

It started!! First crank. I don't believe it!!