My husband likes to make proclamations.  Every so often he comes into a room that is not his (like the kitchen or basically any room except his office and the bathroom) and makes an announcement that he believes will be profound.  “We need to __________” This isn’t my first marriage, so he never experienced that naive new bride who waits with bated breath to hear her liege fill in the blank.  He got me.  I don’t do naive.  I do bitchy.

At first, I thought the proclamations were kinda cute.  “We need to be greener!” ” Isn’t that cute.  The guy who would drive back to his office if we could get a golf cart in the door wants to go green.  He who has thrown away enough Coke cans to pave a road to the moon  and back is becoming Captain Conservation.”  Back then I listened  and waited to see what he was going to do, and then I decided whether or not I was going to support it.  As it turned out I was good with this greener proclamation, and agreed to jump on board.  At first it was okay.  He brought in the re-cycling bins and we begin sorting through the trash like civic minded raccoons.  We changed the bulbs in the lights to the energy efficient type and actually began turning them off on occasion.  Then the new wore off.  I had to remind Captain Conservation more and more often that the bins were full.  His solution was to play reverse Jenga.  (switch to mind numbing marketing music) You just cleverly keep stacking the cans on the top of the pile, but watch your step!  One wrong move and….Junka!! (fade to black)

 We must have had 10 bags of aluminum cans in the garage that needed to go to the recycling plant (which is on the way to the golf course, but damn my luck…it’s winter). So I moved on to phase 2…subtle bitch.  I placed the re-cycling bags on things that were imortant to him.  The unopened case of Cokes,  his tools, and the weekly, to the curb, trash container have all been home to the recycling bags.  He had to have noticed, but for months he never said a word.  When Halloween rolled around and we needed space in the garage to set up the boxes upon boxes of decorations, my genius husband comes up with a great idea…hey you clean out the garage and I’ll take the recycling to the plant.  I want you to know that he managed to pull back into the garage at exactly the same time as the last piece of dust was swept into the dust pan.  I swear to you it was planned that way from the first day he suckered me in to going green!

So today when he swaggered into my house and began “we need to”… “WHAT!  What do WE need to do?  I need to shower and I need to dress.  After that I will need to eat…You need to realize that when you say WE you are actually speaking for both of us and I have a voice.  Now tell me what YOU need to do, and I will decide whether or not I am going to help you.  My sweet, gentle, loving husband who wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouth full of it looked at me as if I had grown a third eye and said in a somewhat stunned voice, “Put up the Christmas tree.”

My IQ is high enough.  I do well in social situations of my own choosing.  I have worked in the public eye and with the unwashed masses, and for the most part I have behaved admirably.  However; when you put me in a situation like the one I tried to illustrate for you in the paragraph above, anything can happen.  Most of the time now I blame it on menopause, but in truth I’ve always been emotionally erratic.  I might get caught laughing at inappropriate times, or saying things purely for shock value, but the one thing that will always cause it to happen, is when I don’t get the response I expected from the person I’m dealing with.  So here I am, all 5′ 3″ of me ready to take on my 6′3″ husband who I just know is going to say something stupid like “we need to join a nudist colony,” and I hear “put up the Christmas tree”.  Well, I just errupt in a fit of laughter.  The stunned look on his face is absolutely priceless, and I’m pretty sure the man is convinced I’ve lost my mind.  I’m rolling around on the floor in tears.  My husband isn’t my first love, but he is my last…and the way I figure it if I keep acting like I just escaped from the 5th floor of the local hospital he isn’t going to be stupid enough to take on another woman after I’m gone.  He may be wise in the ways of recycling but I’m wise in the ways of him.   Maybe if I keep laughing at him when he says “we need to”  eventually he’ll just give up, like some sad Pavlovian response.  No…not my husband…no way in hell!!!

  

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