Tag Archives: humor

Conversations with my wife: Yogurt Cups

Following my son’s lead, my wife recently discovered a taste for yogurt. The difference is that she didn’t suddenly dislike it as soon as we bought it and brought it home. My wife found a different problem with her yogurt. The little single-serving plastic containers that are tapered at the opening vex her to no end.

WIFE: I love this yogurt, but this container is making me so angry. I can’t get to all the yogurt inside. Seriously, how do you get all the yogurt out?

ME: Maybe you need a smaller spoon.

WIFE: If my spoon were any smaller, I wouldn’t be able to taste the yogurt on it. Look at all that yogurt hiding under the lip. Why do these things need a lip anyway? It’s not like they have a real top on them. It’s just a stupid piece of aluminum foil.

ME: Maybe the lip is there to compensate for the lack of a real top.

WIFE: Look at me, scraping around the sides of this thing. It makes me feel poor, like I’m some hungry beggar who found an open yogurt container alongside the road. And here I am, digging for scraps. This is pitiful.

ME: I think you missed a little bit, down in that dark corner.

WIFE: Oh my gosh, digging around this container is making me so hungry. I need to go get another one.

ME: I think you’ve just discovered the answer to why they make you work so hard for it.

WIFE: How many of these do I have to go through before I feel like I’ve gotten my 60 cents worth of yogurt?

ME: You should write the company and tell them they owe you a coupon for free yogurt to make up for all of it you couldn’t dig out of the cup.

WIFE: Good idea. You write the letter. I’ll mail it when you’re done.

ME: Why can’t you write the letter?

WIFE: Can’t you see how busy I am here?

Don’t go through our recycle bin looking for yogurt scraps. All you’ll find is the clean bones of tortured yogurt cups who paid the price for their reticence.

Don’t look a gift dad in the mouth

My son has quite a little collection of Matchbox cars. He likes to line up all his cars in the manner of a miniature used car lot. It’s a way to organize his ever-expanding empire and make its growth quantifiable.

The miniature car lot: Bad credit? No problem! Just go work your charm on Mommy or Daddy.

One day, while he was lining up his cars, a burst of generosity overcame him. “Here, Daddy,” he said. “I have a surprise for you.” He held out his hand in the way a child does when offering an imaginary gift.

I took his pretend present eagerly. I was happy that his head was not so turned by the success of his car dealership that he had forgotten his poor old dad.

“It’s a transformer,” he told me as he handed the gift to me.

“Oh good,” I said. “I love transformers.” I made some turning motions with my hands and some transformative sounds through my teeth. “Schwitt, schwitt, schwitt,” I said as I twisted the air between my fingers. “It’s a truck. Schwitt, schwitt, schwitt. Now, it’s a robot with a laser canon.”

The boy laughed. He was pleased with how well I understood the workings of his gift to me. “Do you have a surprise for me?” he asked.

“Oh yes, I certainly do,” I replied. I could give the kid these kinds of toys all day long. They are imaginative and economical, and that is just the sort of world I need to live in, even if it is make-believe and only lasts until our next trip to Target.

I quickly put my empty hand behind my back and pulled it out again, offering him all the treasure it held. He took the wonder from my hand. “What is it?” he asked.

“It’s an airplane,” I said, happy that I could give him something so nice.

All good things must end. What caused our precious moment to end is hard to know. The best I can guess is that a surge of petulant testosterone spiked up his spine to that reptilian spot in the brainstem of all little boys. Who can say for sure what it is that transforms the pleasant Master Jekyll into that nasty Hyde urchin in the blink of an eye.

He flung my gift away. “I hate airplanes,” he huffed. His cerebrum does not hate airplanes in the least, but a spastic, testosterone-drenched medulla oblongata is liable to hate anything and everything.

“Oh,” I said. “If that’s what you do with my presents, I guess you don’t need to get any more from me.” I looked meaningfully at his array of die-cast cars.

He followed my eyes to his cars. I could almost see self-interest tamping down the testosterone at the top of his neck. “Wait,” he said. “Can we do that again? Here’s another surprise for you.” He held out his hand. “It’s another transformer.”

“That’s so nice,” I said. “I love it.” I drew out the word love as I gazed my meaning into his eyes. “And here’s another surprise for you.”

He took his present out of my hand. “What is it?”

“It’s another airplane.”

He stared at his hands for a moment, too proud to love his imaginary present and too wise hate it. “Let’s play with my cars,” he said after he had given the problem in his hands just enough time to evaporate.

Somewhere between pride and humility there lies a sanctuary of comforting die-cast vehicles. Diplomacy is a complicated playroom.

Five years of trading bacon (and it’s only the beginning)

Five years ago today, my sweetheart and I became husband and wife. Five years may not seem like a long time when it comes to the longevity of marriages, but it’s only just the beginning for us.

My wife and I come from vastly different backgrounds. Neither of us imagined marrying someone like the other before we met. Even after we met, it took a while for this to change. It was easier for her to reel me in because she’s so darned cute. I still don’t know how I got her to fall for me. I’ve never come near that level of salesmanship in any other situation.

My wife is and extrovert with a capital E. I’m a steadfast introvert. She’s a spur-of-the-moment gal. I’m a planner. She jumps from one hair-brained scheme to another. I stick with the one hair-brained scheme I’ve had since I was 12. She prefers the fat part of the bacon. I didn’t know there existed people who preferred the fat part of the bacon.

Sure, we drive each other up the wall sometimes with our different outlooks. But mostly we give each other balance. I keep a foot on the ground and she extends a hand into the sky. Together, we make sure that no one will drift too far away from home and no one will miss a chance to touch the stars.

We also don’t waste any part of the bacon. I’m not big on the term soul mate, but if I were, I’d define it as someone you can always trade bits of bacon with.

I’m looking forward to the next five years, and beyond. I’m sure my wife will take me places I wouldn’t have gone on my own. I feel so lucky that I found the person I wasn’t looking for, the one person I truly needed. It’s easy to love a person completely when they are always making you feel lucky. That’s just one of the reasons why I find it so easy to love her so completely.

Happy anniversary to my soul mate, bacon-swapping, love of my life!

Let’s all go for a ride in the clown car

I bought my car 14 years ago — five years before I began dating my wife and 10 years before we had our first child. I was a single guy who lived in a one-bedroom apartment and watched TV on a 19” box.

My little car has two doors, crank windows, and no A/C. Also, it has a manual transmission, which occupies my kid-swatting hand much of the time I am driving. I chose my car because it promised reliable, low-cost transportation for myself, and possibly a date. Those were the only souls I could imagine transporting.

In recent years, it would have been reasonable to trade in my car for something more family friendly.  As sensible as this act would have been, there are a few reasons why I have not done it.

  • Cars cost more now than they did in 1998. I now have a wife and children. By definition, this means that I have less money than I had in 1998. The gap between myself and a new vehicle only seems to be widening.
  • I love my car. It still gets great gas mileage and has been cheap to keep in good running order. Besides, she’s never whispered a peep about where I went, and with whom, during those five years before my wife came along.
  • My wife’s car, though not perfect, has been adequate as a vehicle for transporting the children. It transports them far more often than my car does.

Sleek, inexpensive, and good at keeping secrets. What more could a man want?

Still, there are times when I need to transport the kids in my car. The first time I tried this, it was quite an eye-opener. We were in a hurry, and since my older son’s car seat was already in the middle of the back seat, I put the baby’s car seat in the most easily accessible spot: behind the driver’s seat.

I couldn’t put the driver’s seat back upright without sliding it all the way forward. I’m not short enough to drive comfortably with the seat all the way forward. It made it kind of difficult to let the clutch all the way out without rolling my ankle to the point of a sprain. My elbows extended perpendicularly from my body whenever I put my hands on the wheel. I had to roll down my window to make enough room to get my left hand on the wheel.

It was a short trip, so I decided to bite the bullet and drive all folded up this one time. I didn’t reckon with a difficult parking situation at my destination. Searching out a parking spot in a crowded area is a very active, albeit slow, piece of driving. As I was resting my chin on my knee, contemplating where best to park, this became painfully clear to me.

In 1922, bachelor Rocco thought only of cutting a dashing figure in his zippy sports car.

An indeterminate number of children later, Rocco reluctantly traded in his sports car for this early minivan. This transaction began the period commonly known as the Great Depression. (Image: Russell Lee – U.S. Farm Security Administration)

Fortunately, the throbbing of my clutch ankle was superseded by a cramp, closer to the spine, in the calf of that same leg. The three-year-old asked from the back seat why the ride was so jerky today. I told him to save his questions until he had identified a viable parking spot.

As I was losing feeling in my lower body, I broke down and decided to pay to park in a ramp. It was a bitter decision, taken for the sake of the children. It meant that I would have to carry the baby a bit farther to our destination, but as I limped away from the vehicle, I decided it was a small price to pay to allow the imprint of the steering wheel to start to fade from my chest.