My wife and I were trying to decide what attractions in Northern Virginia we would like to visit.
ME: We could always go to Manassas. That’s not too far away.
WIFE: What’s that?
ME: It’s a battlefield. In fact there were two battles fought there, so it’s kind of a two-fer.
WIFE: Oh. Another battlefield. Great.
ME: What’s wrong with battlefields?
WIFE: I can never even tell which part of the countryside is the actual battlefield. You always want to drive a hundred miles to look at trees and grass.
Trees and grass . . . and rivers! The pleasant, wooden deck to the right is, no doubt, completely historically accurate. (This is Fort Donelson, TN.)
ME: I always explain what happened where.
WIFE: You always say, “The Indians came in from over here,” like you think it’s important to me to know what direction Indians are apt to come from.
ME: I’ve never taken you to a battlefield that involved Indians.
WIFE: Well somebody told me where the Indians came from. I didn’t just conjure that up on my own.
ME: Are you sure I said Indians?
WIFE: How do expect me to keep track? You’re always pointing at a berm and saying, “So-and-so did this-and-that over there.” What you don’t get is that, to us non-history-fanatics, it’s just a field.
ME: It’s part of your American Heritage. We should see some of these battlefields before they’re all built over with malls.
WIFE: There’s a mall?
A monument at Manassas National Battlefield. Apparently, the cows attacked from the left background. I can’t verify this, because I haven’t been there yet.
Snoozing on the Sofa 
Oh, man, can I relate to this conversation… sigh…
It happens to the best of us. There’s nothing to do but soldier on.
Ha.
Oh Scott, I’m with your wife on this one. lol
She’ll meet you at the mall.
I can give you multiple page list of things to do in NoVa (many with historical value) and none of those things would be a battlefield.
In that case, I’d say your list is terribly incomplete. That’s okay. I know how to find the battlefields. You just look under a new mall.
Wife: There’s a Mall? — Love it! Actually, some of the best battles were fought AT a Mall! I Refereed more than a few of them.
You’ve always been a good peacemaker, which is odd for someone who has so often had the urge to just slap some sense into somebody.
Scott, My wife was very patient when we went to Shiloh and Vicksburg. I wouldn’t subject her to it again though. Shashi got into Shiloh a little but Vicksburg was a total snore to her; sieges, to observers are a bit boring. T
I wonder if that’s why Lincoln’s visit to Petersburg was so short. Maybe he just couldn’t get into sieges.
I loved the post and the captions.
Thanks, ys. Being from cheese land, you must be very familiar with how cows attack.
I thought Virginia is for lovers. Is Northern Virginia set aside for fighters?
Only when my family is vacationing there.
The coes did indeed come from over there..I know this as I was raised in Virginia and both my father and husband forced me to visit the battlefield and learn such things…the Indians came from the far left by the way!
COWS…not coes. sheesh!
As I recall, the coes turned the tide of battle.
roflmao
I can see that the men in your life love you very much.