by Mark Saldivar
“I Do”: the two most binding words in the English
language. You had better damn well mean
it when you say them or you’re in for a hunk of trouble. Upon their utterance, you agree to accept
another person’s Crazy. FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I’m not sure who brought more Crazy to our relationship, me
or my wife, but I can tell you who the kids are more scared of and that person is
not the videogame-loving, foul-mouthed dad.
Yup, you guessed it, it’s the one with breasts. Prod that tiger if you want, Roy, but don’t
be surprised when she rips your face right off of your head.
Do I get her going on purpose? Of course not . Yet somehow, I end up doing it by accident
anyway, like the cow that kicked over the lantern that started the Great
Chicago Fire. Sure, staring at the
“idiot box” all day and neglecting household chores has a propensity to rile the
beast, so I try to tell her I’m doing research for my next blog post and that she
should be more supportive.
Oh shit! Way wrong answer.
Such comments usually earn me an adult “time-out” (aka no
sex). In the end I feel like it’s
usually worth it. I still get to watch
TV or play games and honestly, I’ve had the Captain Crunch enough times that it
isn’t going to magically change to Lucky Charms and surprise me.
Even the children are not safe. On a recent trip to the grocery store, I
split from the group and went down an aisle myself to grab the hamburger buns
we’d forgotten. I returned to the group
in the produce section to see the kids horsing around with watermelons acting
like they were boobs. I started to tell
them to knock it off, until I saw my wife laughing at their spoof. Just as I shook my head and turned to place
the buns in the cart, all hell broke loose.
My stepson, in all of his brilliance, fumbled a melon Taylor
Martinez-style, dropping it to the floor.
As he stood there, mouth agape, staring at the shattered remains of the
melon, Godzilla went into full fire-breathing mode. I cannot repeat the stream of words that
flowed from her mouth, but please believe me some of them were not of any human
dialect.
Satan wept.
After the mess was cleaned and the Hulk calmed down and
turned back into plain old Bruce Banner, we paid for our items (including the
broken watermelon) and left. However, I
fear the children will never recover from the transformation they witnessed.
This isn’t to say that my wife is always on rage mode,
actually, I tend to exaggerate where she is concerned. I feel that if I restate the embellished events
back to her later, she starts to feel bad and is more likely to go easy on us
the next time we fuck something up. In
fact, she even tries to give me credit when I don’t put my full effort into
cleaning or other chores. Case in point:
I made my wife her favorite food on Mother’s Day – BLT’s with waffle
fries. After finishing up our meal, I
cleaned up the mess and washed the dishes.
I use the term “cleaned” loosely, because the tinfoil and crumbs I left
out would disagree with me, as would my wife.
Shortly after retreating to the man cave to do some more “blog research”,
I heard my wife’s voice laughing from upstairs saying, “you call THIS clean?” Then I heard her footsteps coming down the stairs
and my heart began to beat like thunder in my ears. Oh my God!
I did it again.
Goliath was coming!
“You left the tinfoil out, Babe”, was all she said. “Thanks for breakfast, and I love you”.
You see, marriage is a fine balance between like and hate,
sane and crazy, laughter and tears; you never know what the next day will
bring. “I may not always like you, but I
will always love you,” is one of my wife’s favorite sayings. I think that is
the most insightful thing she has ever said.
Just make sure you never tell her I said that; I need to find a way to
spin it into her saying she hates me so I can use it against her later.
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