Shopping Sabotage: New Mama Drama

A new mother left her infant son home for the first time with his father while she went grocery shopping.    While in the middle of the freezer section, she heard a page.

"Tanya  Benwicki, please come to the customer service desk for a telephone call."

Horrific images filled her mind as she raced to the front of the store.

"I'm Tanya Benwicki," she breathed heavily.  "You have a phone call for me?"

The cashier behind the counter smiled at her amusedly. "Indeed we do.  You can take it right here."

She grabbed the phone.  "Hello?"

"You need to come home right now!"  Her husband exclaimed.

" Jay?  What is it?  What's happened?"

"Why didn't you answer your cell phone?  The baby pooped and threw up all over me!"

"What?"  She exclaimed.  The cashiers behind the counter began to giggle as she felt heat rise to her face.

"You heard me!   I've been calling and calling and there's no answer."

"That's because there's no reception here in the store."

"So come home now!"

"You want me to stop what I'm doing to change a diaper? "  She hissed through gritted teeth.  " I suppose you want a sponge bath also?"

"You need to get home now and take care of this baby!"

"Jay, you are a grown man perfectly capable of changing a diaper and cleaning yourself up."

"But  I'm covered in it!"

"I'm not your mother.  Deal with it!"  She slammed the phone down.  "Sorry about that," she mumbled.

"Don't worry honey," said the cashier.  "He provided us with today's entertainment."

Tanya went in search of her abandoned shopping cart.  After she checked out and loaded her groceries into her car, she noticed several messages on her cell phone, many from her husband and one from her mother-in-law.  She deleted the ones from her husband and listened to her MIL's. 

"Tanya, call me," she giggled.

Tanya rolled her eyes and dialed her number.  "Hey Sandy, it's me."

Raucous laughter filled the air.  "Hey honey, did Jay get a hold of you?"

"He had me paged at the grocery store because there's no reception inside!"

"Ha ha ha!"  Sandy gasped. 

"Yeah, real funny," Tanya groused.  "I take it he called you, too?"

"Yup, I told him to step up and be a man."

"Well, you raised him."

"Maybe, but you married him!"

No, I'm the man!

A friend of mine had been after her live-in boyfriend to help her with cutting back some trees and hauling them to the curb for bulk pickup.  He finally agreed and, when the allotted weekend loomed,  he conveniently hurt his back.  He limped around and moaned and felt all kinds of sorry for himself.   She persevered and cut the trees herself but was unable to haul them to the curb.  He generously told her to leave them there until he was better. One of her older guy friends came over to have her remove staples from his dog (it’d had surgery and she was a vet), so she asked him to help her drag the trees.   All of a sudden, her man made a miraculous recovery.  He walked out perfectly sound, hauled the trees up, cut them to pieces and even managed to throw them on top of the already tall pile of limbs.

Her male friend quietly said to her, “There’s nothing that will make a man heal quicker than the threat of another man doing his job”.

She concluded, "I suppose that makes this a combo dumb and wise man story. Too bad I’m dating the dumb one!

Refrigerator Stories: Baby Bird Syndrome Revisited

I came home around ten at night, utterly spent after a long four-day conference.  I collapsed onto the sofa next to my husband and was barely able to tell him the news about an exciting business possibility when he interrupted.

"That's great.  Do we have any ice cream?"

I was stunned into a brief silence which then erupted into an exhaustion-fueled rage.  "Really, baby bird?  Am I that much of a trigger for you that the moment I walk in the door you want some food?  Seriously?"

He looked at me in awe.  "I just thought that you would know if we had any."

"You've been alone for four days and you're asking me if we have any ice cream?  Have you not looked in the freezer since I've been gone?"

"Never mind.  I'll get it myself."

I went to bed.

You broke the car!

My sister and her family rented a cottage at the beach for a couple of weeks.  One morning, she decided to go to the store for an early donut run but found the car would not start.  She immediately informed her husband, not a mechanic by trade, of the difficulty.  He poked,  prodded and tried incessantly to start the car but to no avail.

"You broke the car!" He accused as he glowered at her from the driver's seat.  "I drove it last night and it was fine.  What did you do?"

Now, my sister is not exactly what I would call a car person.  She is a self-proclaimed fashionista, gets her nails done regularly and tries her utmost not to pump her own gas.  She studied her fuming husband for a moment, crossed her arms and leaned on the open car window.

"Well, now that you ask."  She said, her eyes narrowing.  "I pulled out the spark plugs, disconnected the battery cables and, oh yes…poured sugar down the tank."

He gaped at her in astonishment.

"What the hell do you think I did, you idiot?  I tried to start the damned thing!"

Shopping Sabotage

A friend of mine who lived with her boyfriend often complained of his Shopping Sabotage.  Her man was the stay-at-home-on-the-sofa-watching-Fox-News-24/7 type while she was active in work, volunteering, exercising and teaching dance.  He hated shopping  of any shape or form and was happy to let her take care of every minute detail of their lives from the moment she moved in.  This was fine during the week when he was distracted by work, but on the weekend when she had errands to run, he really became annoying.

"Tim, I'm going to the mall to look for pants.  Want to come?"  She asked.

"Nope", he replied, engrossed in his program.

"Ok.  I'm going to stop at the grocery store on my way home.  Do you need anything?"

"Nope."

"You said you were making pot roast for dinner.  Do you need anything for that?"

"Nope."

She went on her way.  Just as she reached the mall, she started receiving calls.

"When are you coming home?"

"What do you mean?  I just got here!"

"I'm bored."

"Bored!  You didn't want to do anything today, remember?  You just wanted to stay home."

"You could've stayed home."

"And do what?  Watch you watch TV?"

"You could sit with me."

"Good bye, Timothy."

A little while later, she received another call.

"Don't freak out, but there's something wrong with the cat."

"What do you mean, something wrong?"

"He's choking."

"It's probably just a hairball."

"No, I mean it.  He's really choking."

"Then pick him up and take him to the vet!  It's two minutes from the house!"

"Oh, you're right.  It's just a hairball."

Not fifteen minutes went by and she got another call.

"What!"

"I just called to say I love you."

"Yeah, right.  What do you want?"

"I mean it."

"What is your problem?  Do you really want me to come home?  You never phone me this much during the week!"

"No, go on with your shopping."

She hung up and continued her perusing.  Twenty minutes later…

"Where's the salt?"

"Are you for real?"

"You moved it," he insisted.

"What are you talking about?  When I moved in, you wouldn't let me move anything in the kitchen, remember?"

"You're such a liar.  I can't find it.  You know you moved it."  He accused.

"Seriously, you need professional help.  It's right where it always has been for ten years."

"Oh, here it is, next to the baking powder."

"Exactly where it always has been."

"No," he argued.  "It wasn't always there.  I keep it on the shelf below that."

"Timothy, the salt is where it has always been before God created the Earth.  Get on with your life."  She hung up the phone.  She finished at the mall and started to head to the grocery store when she got a call.

"Can you pick up some onions?"

"You said you didn't need anything."

"I thought we had some."

"Ok, anything else?"

"No, that's it."

"All right.  Bye."

She arrived at the grocery store and began shopping.  Surprise, surprise:  her phone rang.

"Yes?"

"We need cumin."

"Cumin?  We have cumin."

"No, we're out."

"I'm telling you, there is a new bottle of cumin in the spice rack.  Just look."

"I have looked.  There is none."

"Well, look again."

There was a momentary pause.  "No, we don't have any."

"I'm not buying more cumin just because you can't read."

"I can read," he huffed indignantly.  "You're the one who doesn't know what they're talking about.  And I'm telling you, we don't…oh.  Uh, here it is."

She hung up the phone.  Two minutes later…

"Can you get some baby carrots, beef broth and a pot roast?"

"What?  Are you kidding me?"  She shrieked.  "You said you had gotten everything for dinner already!"

"You see, I try to do something nice and make dinner and you turn into a bitch!"

"That's because you don't have a brain cell working!  When I ask if you have everything you need for a dinner you had already planned and you reply "YES", that means you've already shopped for it!"

"Are you going to get it or not?"

"Fine."  She hung up.

Five minutes later.

"I feel like mashed potatoes."

She hung up and moved out a couple of months later.

Refrigerator Stories: Got Milk?

A recently retired friend of mine met her husband when they were in high school. 

"Honey," she said to me.  "Don't expect it to ever change.  My husband still can't find his way around the refrigerator after forty five years."

"What do you mean?"  I asked.

"He'll open the refrigerator door and ask, 'Where's the milk?', and I tell him that it's right in front of him.  He'll say 'I can't find it.' so I tell him I guess we don't have any.  He'll then reply 'It's right here.  Why did you say we don't have any?' and I'll say why did you ask where it is in the first place?"

"Trust me," she sighed.  "It will never change."

A Really Dumb Guy Story

This is actually not A Big Dumb Guy Story, but A Really Dumb Guy Story.  A girlfriend of mine was dating a very hot hockey player who, it turned out, was as dumb as a bag of rocks (her description, not mine).  One day at her apartment, he spotted her old telephone that she kept strictly for land line use.  It was one of those old corded varieties, the kind that was small and flat and hung itself up when placed face down on the table.  He looked at it, picked it up and examined it carefully. 

"It's a telephone," she explained.

"I don't get it," he said as he picked it up, listened to the dial tone and then placed it back on the table.  He repeated this sequence several times.

"What's not to get?" She asked.  "It's plugged into the wall and it hangs up when placed on a flat surface."

His brain couldn't fathom the technology because he kept repeating his investigation until she felt like ripping out her hair.

"It's a telephone!"  She yelled.

Later on, they were watching a political rally on television.  When a new interviewee was introduced, the person's name, city and state would be shown on the screen under their image.

"What is that?"  He asked.

"What is what?" She said.

"IL.   It says IL."

"Illinois.  They're from Chicago.  Illinois.  Chicago is in Illinois."

The look of perplexity on his face almost gave her a stroke.

"What about that?  IN."  He asked.

"Indiana.  Do you not know how states are abbreviated?"

Hot or not, she quickly dumped him.

Refrigerator Stories: Delayed Reaction

I was working in the office off of the kitchen when I heard my husband walk from the family room to the refrigerator.  He opened the freezer door and perused for a good thirty seconds before returning to the sofa in the family room. 

Approximately twenty minutes went by before I heard him call out.

"Do we have any ice cream?"

Every muscle in my body immediately seized.  "Why are you asking me?  I swear you just had your face stuck in the freezer not fifteen minutes ago."

"I didn't see any."

"What do you call fudgesicles, Weight Watcher raspberry pops and Snickers ice cream bars?"

"I thought maybe you had some real ice cream in the garage freezer."

Just shoot me.

Refrigerator Stories: The Mystery of the Black Grapes

My husband lay sprawled on the couch watching some sports program while I played on the computer in the office next door.

"Do we have any fruit?" He called out.

"Yes."   I replied.

"Where is it?"

"In the fridge."

I heard him get up,  walk across to the kitchen and open the fridge.

"Where?"

"In the fruit drawer."

"Which one is that?"

"There are only two drawers."

"Oh." 

I heard the sound of drawers being pulled open while he investigated the possibilities.

"What is this?'

I could only imagine what foreign object held his attention:  oranges, apples or grapes.  "What is what?"

"This."  He said, holding a bag of grapes for my perusal.

"Those are called grapes."   I explained patiently.

"No, they're black."

"So?"

"I mean, why are they black?"

I hesitated.  "Because they are…black…grapes."

"I've never seen black grapes before."

I stared at him in disbelief.  "You ate them in the chicken salad yesterday!  Do you not remember that?"

"Oh, uh, well…I just don't remember them being black."

I returned my attention to the computer.

"Are they seedless?"

Sigh…

Shampoo, anyone?

I walked into our master bath one morning to change a roll of toilet paper that had inexplicably used itself up and forgot to replace itself.  My husband was taking a shower (which I swear is his usual custom) and heard me rustling around.

"Which one of these is shampoo?"  He asked loudly above the steam and pummeling torrents.

Seriously?   I thought to myself.  Did he really just hand me one that is this easy?  "The one that says SHAMPOO." I answered. 

There was no response.  How could there be?

Forked up

I walked into the kitchen and found my husband with his hand reaching out to open the silverware drawer.  He spotted me, stopped what he was doing and asked, "Do we have forks?"

This is a prime example of what I call "Baby Bird Syndrome."  A perfectly capable man turns into a toddler when a woman is around.

"No," I replied.  "We do not."

He rolled his eyes.  "You know what I mean."

"No, I'm sorry.  We do not have forks.  Never did.  Never will."  I said as I continued through to the family room.

He grabbed the handle, selected a fork and shut the drawer in a huff.