I’ve come to the conclusion that my husband’s mind makes that of Russell Crowe’s character in A Beautiful Mind appear simplistic. What goes on inside that massive head of his should be the subject of medical documentary series on TLC, like the man whose skin has turned to wood or the lady with the huge goiter on her leg. His brain is equally as intriguing and I’m sure that with the proper MRI, doctors would be mystified by the way each section of his brain lights up the scan in response to select stimulus. I know that personally, the connection between one thought and its aftermath has perplexed me on more than one occasion.
For example, one day, my husband and I carried on a perfectly logical discussion about the dogs’ needing haircuts. Nothing abnormal was stated, nothing to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I left the discussion satisfied that I would schedule an appointment with the groomers in the near future. Thus, you can imagine my surprise when I returned home the next evening to find that my husband, with no prior experience in dog styling, other than lopping off one of Farrah’s toe nails in the clipping incident of 2003, had taken it upon himself to shave both dogs. Knowing we had no proper grooming tools in our possession, I was further horrified to learn that he had used his own electric shaver to complete the transformations. It is not as if our dogs already had short hair and this was a relatively small undertaking. No, our dogs are both long-haired beasts with thick undercoats. How he used a man’s electric razor was beyond my imagination.
However, the shock did not end with the realization that my husband had perilously attacked our dogs with a personal grooming device. While Farrah appeared to have endured the shearing unscathed and still resembling my beloved dog, Reggie was an entirely different story. In true male bonding fashion, my husband gave Reggie a mohawk. On his sides, his ebony black fur was now buzzed to reveal the pale pink skin beneath, but down the middle of his back, extending from his head to his tail, was a much thicker line of fur, making our dog look more like a hyena than the pitiful black lab/something mix that he was. All I could think about was what the neighbors would say as I walked my freak of a dog down the street. Sweet. Of course, my husband thought the mohawk was the best thing since sliced bread and was very paternally proud of his creation. His now otherwise wimpy dog with attachment issues was now cool enough to join a biker gang or at least hang with the pit bulls at the dog park. I guess I learned my lesson in this situation though: Don’t give your husband any ideas of which you might not like the consequences.
Unfortunately this mohawk style became a pattern around our house for a while. Soon after the dogs received their makeovers, I sent my husband out to mow our lawn. A short time later, too short a time, he was finished. “Are you done already?” I asked. “I have other things to do, I’ll finish the rest of the lawn when I get back,” he replied. Famous last words. As I peered out the window onto our lush green lawn, his handiwork again took me aback. He had proceeded to only mow the outer perimeter of our lawn, which was already beginning to resemble a jungle with tall grasses and an excessive amount of small wildlife seeking shelter in its shade. Inside this perimeter, the savannah still remained. Great, now both my lawn and my dog look like remnants from an ‘80s hair band, I mused. Needless to say, he did not return later to finish the lawn and we were those neighbors for a while. Fortunately, that was the end of the mohawk phase for a while.
Another incident where one innocent situation turned into a full-fledge mental subterfuge occurred on a recent trip to Nashville for a family event. Upon arrival my husband noticed that he had failed to pack an adequate number of socks for the festivities. As we discussed the predicament, I completely expected him to rewear a pair when necessary. Little did I know what he actually had in mind.
On the final day of our trip, after all of the socks had been worn, and my husband was still in need of a pair, he appeared to have a brainstorm, or a brain cloud like Tom Hanks in Joe Versus the Volcano. Either way, the next thing I knew my husband had mentally transported himself back to the 19th century to solve his problem. With the tap running, the mini bar of soap provided by the hotel in one hand and his white athletic socks in the other, he attempted to wash his footwear in the sink. For a man who struggles to put his own dishes in the dishwasher, the vision of him physically cleaning something made me a bit light-headed. However, he was quite proud of his idea. “We have to leave in 30 minutes. How are you going to dry those,” I asked, eyeing his soaking wet socks. As he squeezed excess water from his foot covers, he simply picked up the hairdryer attached to the wall in response. While I tried to explain to him the pitfalls of placing a water soaked item on top of an electrical device, he refused to listen.
Nevertheless, as soon as he placed the ankle of the sock over the front of the hair dryer, the machine immediately shorted out. Surprise! But my husband was not to be defeated by the properties of electric conduction. He simply squeezed out some more water, hit the reset button on the blower and tried again. This time his contraption worked for a bit longer and then cut out. With tunnel vision focus, my husband persisted with his work.
Finally, he was able to convince the dryer to work consistently with his sock firmly attached to the front, blowing like a kite in the wind. Confident that he was now successful, my husband walked away to finish getting dressed. Unfortunately, when he returned to check on his innovation, he discovered that he was now slowly burning a hole in his sock with the heat. He quickly removed the sock, but the damage had been done. Like a true man, he did not throw those socks out and wore them as planned that day. Every time he wears that specific pair, I can not help but giggle when I observe the brown burn mark on the ankle and remember my husband and his single minded belief that he could be his own Laundromat in the bathroom of our hotel room.
A final recent incident that made my mind swirl like a tornado in Kansas, involved the Passover holiday. Every year, I always stage a Seder to celebrate the event regardless of whether we have any Jewish friends of not. This year was not going to be an exception and as I gathered my recipes and made my grocery list, my husband decided that he wanted to have brisket this year. Being a vegetarian, brisket had not entered into our celebration in the past, thus I was surprised by his new suggestion. However, he was adamant. After he chastised me, “What kind of Jew are you that you don’t have brisket for Passover?” I’d had enough. “The vegetarian kind,” I responded. “I’ll make you chicken or fish, but I don’t do briskets.” As I had learned by then, once my husband had an idea in his head, there was nothing I could do to purge it.
“I’ll make a brisket then,” he announced. This was the same man who said that he didn’t make me dinner as a romantic gesture because he took me out instead. Other than the occasional grilled cheese sandwich and DiGiorno oven pizza, I didn’t think that I’d ever seen my husband cook an actual meal during or time together. A brisket seemed a bit more than his limited culinary skills could handle, but his mind was made up. So, he made the necessary inquiries on the internet and via a phone call to my mother and obtained a recipe. Sure enough, the next afternoon what appeared to be an entire side of goat or lamb or whatever brisket is made of, appeared in my fridge. For a vegetarian you can understand how a six pound slab of meat covering an entire shelf in my fridge was a bit disconcerting, but he was determined to have his brisket, so I wasn’t going to protest, too much. However, I did remind my husband that since the brisket was his Passover project, I bore no responsibility and would not offer any sort of assistance in his endeavor other than to pull out the fire extinguisher if necessary, and I was certain that it would be.
As the Passover preparations began, we took a closer look at the brisket recipe and it seemed to call for continuous supervision, something that my husband could not provide during his time at work. As previously stated, I refused to baste or rotate or saturate his meat product; besides, I had kugels and tzimmes and what felt like eight five apples to prepare for the rest of the meal. Fortunately, Lipton onion soup mix came through for us. Randomly, they provided an easy, stick-it-in-the-oven and let it cook recipe that allowed my husband to make his brisket and me to stay true to my word.
In the end, my husband had his Passover brisket and while it wasn’t like Nana used to make, it was edible and a few diners at our Seder even had seconds. I have now learned better than to intervene when my husband has an idea in his head, however ludicrous it sounds in the beginning, unless it threatens someone’s safety or national security. Will we have a brisket again next year? I hope not, but I wouldn’t count it out as a possibility.
Clearly, my husband is a man of Rainman like focus and persistence. Anyone who has ever seen the classroom-sized white board on the wall in our home office, with his lists and ideas all organized in different columns and differentiated by color, can attest to this. I am slowly discovering that it is better to go with the flow when he has one of his brainstorms as well as choose my words carefully because I never know how my husband will interpret what I have said. I am not sure that I want to entirely understand how my husband’s mind works, as I am certain that I would be a bit terrified at what I would find. Nevertheless, his ideas definitely keep my life interesting and for that I am grateful, even if I won’t admit it at the time.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Bonnie and Clyde? More Like Lucy and Desi
For the most part, I consider myself a fairly honest, moral, and upstanding human being. I am a teacher for goodness sake, shaping the lives of tomorrow’s youth. That is certainly not a job for the ethically corrupt (at least not for long). Perhaps the most morally ambiguous action in which I have ever partaken involved sneaking into the movie theater as a teenager, and really, at those prices, who could blame me? I hold doors for the elderly, let people with small purchases go in front of me in the grocery store, and I even bless strangers that sneeze in my vicinity.
However, this fairly squeaky clean, do-gooder attitude is exactly the reason why the events of a few nights ago have so appalled me and shaken my entire sense of self. Of course, I was not alone in the series of events that I am about to explain as my husband also participated in the succeeding act of delinquency. I should have known that, at some point, this man would get me in trouble with the law, maybe not to the extent of the Craigslist killer and his devoted fiancé, but maybe a car chase or parking violation at least. It was only a matter of time.
The evening of our impending wrongdoing started off very positively. We had purchased tickets to see Dane Cook live in Baltimore and since most of our exciting nights usually consist of going to dinner and then watching tv in separate rooms, this was a monumental night out. As we arrived at the parking garage near the arena, the lady in front informed us that we could either pay ten dollars then or use a credit card upon exiting. Like most members of our generation, we don’t carry cash and selected the latter option. We found a decent spot and headed in to enjoy the show.
After a night filled with laughter that sometimes brought us to tears, we contentedly made our way back to our vehicle. Then, the night began to take a turn for the worse. Immediately upon entering the car, my husband proceeded to get a violent nose bleed. Blood was everywhere and he looked about as competent at handling this situation as a three year old. He just sat there and let blood pour out of his nose like water from a faucet. It was disgusting and after I repeatedly explained the whole pinch your nose with the Kleenex procedure, he finally caught on. However, the damage to his wardrobe had been done. Now, instead of attending a comedy show, it appeared as though we had come to Baltimore, unfortunately like so many others, to participate in some sort of mass murder.
As the blood bath abated, he shed his outer button down shirt and was left with a slightly less bloody undershirt while I was left with a car full of scarlet paper products. At this point, I knew that our blissful rendez-vous had drawn to a close.
Finally, we were able to join the endless line of cars snaking down the parking structure. Twenty minutes later we had not edged any further toward the exit when we noticed that some automobiles were headed towards an alternate point of departure. Thank goodness. As we followed this new path, we observed a sign that read, “Credit Cards Only”. Perfect, I mused to myself, since that was our intended payment plan from the start of this evening. Unfortunately, I had counted my chickens before they hatched.
Upon pulling up to the gray ticket machine and sliding in first my parking ticket and then my credit card, the feeling of hope and promise that we would be leaving soon began to disintegrate. “Bad Credit Card” the machine stated. What does that mean? I tried the whole action again while behind me, cars continued to line up like anxious contestants for American Idol. Again, my credit card was denied. Now, I started to panic. There was no way out. I certainly couldn’t ask hundreds of people to back their cars up so I could find another route, and I couldn’t drive forward as the bright yellow and black electric arm stood blocking my path. I was trapped and I could tell that the people behind me were starting to get restless.
Now, I am normally the problem solver in our relationship, the calm, collected one who fixes mistakes and gets my husband out of trouble, so when I shouted “Get out of the car and lift up the arm,” in a tone resembling Zul the gatekeeper, I think he began to realize the gravity of the situation and the extent of my anxiety. However, his immediate response was less than I had hoped. “I’m not getting out of the car, I’m covered in blood,” he growled back angrily. But, as my voice increased in both volume and frequency and the intensity of my glare began to burn into his skin, he finally realized that I was serious. This was not a topic for discussion.
In my head, I envisioned my husband lifting up the mechanical arm so that I could drive my car underneath. However, he clearly had an alternate interpretation of events planned out in his own mind. As he raised the mechanical blockade, I started to drive my car forward, but my husband did not seem to be moving out of the way. Then, rather than step aside, he suddenly became the incredible hulk and bent the mechanical arm in half and tried to shove it out of the driving lane. Needless to say, mangling the device did not exactly solve the problem and probably created new ones. While the arm retracted at first, and my husband dove back into the car, it began to rebound as I drove forward, gently, lamely, hitting the windshield as I continued to make my escape.
Suddenly, we were Bonnie and Clyde, but not nearly as nonchalant about our criminal activity. The fact that Baltimore on a Friday night is ridden with cops due to its impressive crime rate did not help to ease our anxiety. “I can’t believe we just did that,” I wheezed, barely able to breath. My heart was beating with the speed of a snare drum. I could not even process the events of the previous few minutes. “Where there cameras?” My husband inquired frantically. “I didn’t see any, but I was busy trying not to pass out from fear, so maybe,” I replied, now realizing the implication of having driven my vehicle to the concert. While my husband was observed by the throng of cars behind us dressed like a serial killer, any images on video would be of my license plate.
As reality set in and we hurriedly tried to maneuver our way out of Baltimore, we quickly called my husband’s best friend and the only lawyer we knew. We needed to determine the severity of our actions. While I was pretty sure we could make a good case for having to go through the ticket area without paying, I was fairly certain that massacring the mechanical arm would require a bit more explanation. Fortunately, our friend was able to reassure us that the consequences of our actions, if there were any, would be minimal and we wouldn’t lose our jobs or chances for future employment. Nevertheless, each police siren nearly sent us into catatonic states of shock. We couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being followed and it was only a matter of time before the long arm of the law found us.
So far, we have managed to elude the police, probably since Baltimore has greater issues than a couple of parking garage payment violators. Although our quiet evenings of separate television viewing originally seemed monotonous, perhaps we were safer on our couches than attempting to venture out into the real world. The previous time we traveled outside for a night on the town, we went to an ‘80s cover band concert and ended up being pulled over dressed like Madonna and Don Johnson. Apparently, nightlife is just not for us. I have come to the realization that I would much rather be watching an episode of Law and Order than becoming one.
However, this fairly squeaky clean, do-gooder attitude is exactly the reason why the events of a few nights ago have so appalled me and shaken my entire sense of self. Of course, I was not alone in the series of events that I am about to explain as my husband also participated in the succeeding act of delinquency. I should have known that, at some point, this man would get me in trouble with the law, maybe not to the extent of the Craigslist killer and his devoted fiancé, but maybe a car chase or parking violation at least. It was only a matter of time.
The evening of our impending wrongdoing started off very positively. We had purchased tickets to see Dane Cook live in Baltimore and since most of our exciting nights usually consist of going to dinner and then watching tv in separate rooms, this was a monumental night out. As we arrived at the parking garage near the arena, the lady in front informed us that we could either pay ten dollars then or use a credit card upon exiting. Like most members of our generation, we don’t carry cash and selected the latter option. We found a decent spot and headed in to enjoy the show.
After a night filled with laughter that sometimes brought us to tears, we contentedly made our way back to our vehicle. Then, the night began to take a turn for the worse. Immediately upon entering the car, my husband proceeded to get a violent nose bleed. Blood was everywhere and he looked about as competent at handling this situation as a three year old. He just sat there and let blood pour out of his nose like water from a faucet. It was disgusting and after I repeatedly explained the whole pinch your nose with the Kleenex procedure, he finally caught on. However, the damage to his wardrobe had been done. Now, instead of attending a comedy show, it appeared as though we had come to Baltimore, unfortunately like so many others, to participate in some sort of mass murder.
As the blood bath abated, he shed his outer button down shirt and was left with a slightly less bloody undershirt while I was left with a car full of scarlet paper products. At this point, I knew that our blissful rendez-vous had drawn to a close.
Finally, we were able to join the endless line of cars snaking down the parking structure. Twenty minutes later we had not edged any further toward the exit when we noticed that some automobiles were headed towards an alternate point of departure. Thank goodness. As we followed this new path, we observed a sign that read, “Credit Cards Only”. Perfect, I mused to myself, since that was our intended payment plan from the start of this evening. Unfortunately, I had counted my chickens before they hatched.
Upon pulling up to the gray ticket machine and sliding in first my parking ticket and then my credit card, the feeling of hope and promise that we would be leaving soon began to disintegrate. “Bad Credit Card” the machine stated. What does that mean? I tried the whole action again while behind me, cars continued to line up like anxious contestants for American Idol. Again, my credit card was denied. Now, I started to panic. There was no way out. I certainly couldn’t ask hundreds of people to back their cars up so I could find another route, and I couldn’t drive forward as the bright yellow and black electric arm stood blocking my path. I was trapped and I could tell that the people behind me were starting to get restless.
Now, I am normally the problem solver in our relationship, the calm, collected one who fixes mistakes and gets my husband out of trouble, so when I shouted “Get out of the car and lift up the arm,” in a tone resembling Zul the gatekeeper, I think he began to realize the gravity of the situation and the extent of my anxiety. However, his immediate response was less than I had hoped. “I’m not getting out of the car, I’m covered in blood,” he growled back angrily. But, as my voice increased in both volume and frequency and the intensity of my glare began to burn into his skin, he finally realized that I was serious. This was not a topic for discussion.
In my head, I envisioned my husband lifting up the mechanical arm so that I could drive my car underneath. However, he clearly had an alternate interpretation of events planned out in his own mind. As he raised the mechanical blockade, I started to drive my car forward, but my husband did not seem to be moving out of the way. Then, rather than step aside, he suddenly became the incredible hulk and bent the mechanical arm in half and tried to shove it out of the driving lane. Needless to say, mangling the device did not exactly solve the problem and probably created new ones. While the arm retracted at first, and my husband dove back into the car, it began to rebound as I drove forward, gently, lamely, hitting the windshield as I continued to make my escape.
Suddenly, we were Bonnie and Clyde, but not nearly as nonchalant about our criminal activity. The fact that Baltimore on a Friday night is ridden with cops due to its impressive crime rate did not help to ease our anxiety. “I can’t believe we just did that,” I wheezed, barely able to breath. My heart was beating with the speed of a snare drum. I could not even process the events of the previous few minutes. “Where there cameras?” My husband inquired frantically. “I didn’t see any, but I was busy trying not to pass out from fear, so maybe,” I replied, now realizing the implication of having driven my vehicle to the concert. While my husband was observed by the throng of cars behind us dressed like a serial killer, any images on video would be of my license plate.
As reality set in and we hurriedly tried to maneuver our way out of Baltimore, we quickly called my husband’s best friend and the only lawyer we knew. We needed to determine the severity of our actions. While I was pretty sure we could make a good case for having to go through the ticket area without paying, I was fairly certain that massacring the mechanical arm would require a bit more explanation. Fortunately, our friend was able to reassure us that the consequences of our actions, if there were any, would be minimal and we wouldn’t lose our jobs or chances for future employment. Nevertheless, each police siren nearly sent us into catatonic states of shock. We couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being followed and it was only a matter of time before the long arm of the law found us.
So far, we have managed to elude the police, probably since Baltimore has greater issues than a couple of parking garage payment violators. Although our quiet evenings of separate television viewing originally seemed monotonous, perhaps we were safer on our couches than attempting to venture out into the real world. The previous time we traveled outside for a night on the town, we went to an ‘80s cover band concert and ended up being pulled over dressed like Madonna and Don Johnson. Apparently, nightlife is just not for us. I have come to the realization that I would much rather be watching an episode of Law and Order than becoming one.
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