Me: *screams* “There’s a snail on my side of the tent! Get it off!”
Partner: “Why can’t you just be afraid of spiders like a normal person?”
Me: “Spiders are more common than snails, so you’d have to deal with the screaming girlfriend issue much more frequently.”
Partner: “Good point…”
(I’m at the takeaway when my wife calls.)
Wife: *clearly distressed* “Home, now.”
Me: “But honey…”
Wife: “Home! Now!”
Me: “What’s wrong?”
Wife: “Home! Now!”
(I return home as soon as possible without breaking too many speed limits or causing accidents. The house is not on fire. Everything looks normal. I enter cautiously and find my wife on the sofa, still in distress, and my two-year-old playing on the rug with the dog without a care in the world. I have to add that earlier I made some minor repairs to the roof and left the ladder out.)
Wife: “Ladder. Gone. Now.”
Me: *carefully, still not finding an urgency* “Sure, honey, after dinner.”
Wife: “Ladder. Gone. Now.”
Me: *slightly irritated* “Yes, but after dinner…”
Wife: “Now!”
Me: “But dinner will get cold…”
(As she threw me a murderous look, I went outside and took away the ladder. When I reentered, she was calmed down enough to explain what happened. She was in the kitchen when she heard what she thought was the cat on the roof but it sounded a bit heavy, so she decided to check. Somehow, our toddler, who has the run of the house and the garden — which is normally childproof — made it up the ladder and up the roof. I admit I needed a bit of a sit-down after that, as well. And in the three years since, I’ve never forgotten to take the ladder back down again when I was done working. Our daughter is still the adventurous and exploring type.)
My husband had a falling-out with his former best friend after the guy cheated on our other best friend. (She found him in bed with another woman and immediately left him.) Then, the woman he cheated with got pregnant. My husband has described this woman as “crazy,” “abusive,” and “manipulative.” He’s 99% sure she got pregnant just to keep her boyfriend from leaving. She drank alcohol during her pregnancy, and was seen in public with her baby, clearly under the influence.
At one point, she threw something heavy at her boyfriend’s head, giving him a black eye. She’s also a pathological liar, constantly telling everyone that she and her boyfriend got together after he had already broken up with his ex when everyone knows what really happened — the guy admits it.
Now this couple has decided to get married even though the guy clearly doesn’t want to be with her and had tried to get back together with his ex several times.
It’s the day before their wedding, and my husband asks him, “So, are you really going through with it?”
His reply: “Oh, yeah, she’s acting okay now.”
What a touching proclamation of love! Just what every bride wants to hear her husband say!
(I live south of an airport that spans two major metropolitan areas. Since I don’t have a car, anytime I need to travel, I’ll take a rideshare up to the airport. It helps if I can split the cost, but on this particular day I call the rideshare by myself and get in alone.)
Driver: “Oh, you’re going to the airport today. Is [Airline] the right stop? Where are you flying?”
Me: “Yeah, [Airline]’s the right one. I’m just going back home for the holidays to visit my family.”
Driver: “How horrible. My wife makes me visit her family all the time.”
Me: “I don’t really mind it, actually. I haven’t seen them in a while since we live in different states, so it’ll be nice to visit with them again.”
Driver: “Right. Whatever. I just hate when she makes me do stuff like that.”
Me: “Yeah… families can be a lot, I guess.”
(I’m uncomfortable with the turn the conversation has taken, so I pretend to be on my phone for a bit. Fortunately, the car isn’t silent, since the driver has the radio on. Unfortunately, after about five minutes he turns up the volume — way up. It’s heavy metal music, and the lyrics are both sexually explicit and profane. I’m trying my best to ignore it when the music is cut off by a shrill ringing. The driver swears, almost swerves into another lane, and then presses a button on his phone. It’s not a call; he’s FaceTiming someone with his phone volume all the way up. He doesn’t turn the music down, either, so when he starts talking he’s practically screaming.)
Driver: “Hey, honey!”
Driver’s Wife: “Where are you? I thought that was your last ride?”
Driver: “Yeah, I’m just going to the airport.”
Driver’s Wife: “What?! The airport?! But you still need to get groceries!”
Driver: “I THOUGHT YOU WERE GETTING THEM!”
Driver’s Wife: “No, you moron. I’m picking up the f****** kids!”
Driver: “Well, you didn’t tell me not to go to the airport!”
Driver’s Wife: “I didn’t think I needed to tell you not to go all the way up to f****** Seattle. My parents are coming tonight, you f****** moron, and we’re all out of f****** eggs!”
Driver: “Well, I’m already driving there, so you can’t f****** expect me to just dump my passenger by the side of the road or something, you stupid b****! You should’ve told me this morning!”
Driver’s Wife: “Told you?! Told you?! Are you a grown-a** man, or are you a f****** child?!”
(The driver is gesticulating angrily by this point, swerving all over the place, and nearly hitting several other cars. He continues arguing with his wife for another twenty minutes or so, both of their voices steadily increasing in pitch as the conversation goes on.)
Driver: WHO THE F*** DO YOU THINK GIVES YOU THE MONEY FOR YOUR F****** EGGS, YOU GREEDY B****?!”
Driver’s Wife: “You?! Give me money?! You useless, unemployed son-of-a-b****! You can’t even afford–“
(By coincidence, my phone dings, and the wife goes quiet… for all of two seconds.)
Driver’s Wife: “Do you have a f****** passenger in there?! Am I on speaker?!”
Driver: “Uh… oh, here, um, your gate—“
(He swung across three lanes of traffic, pulling to the curb in front of a completely different airline than the one I was flying with. He pressed the button to unlock my door and waved at me to get out. I got out by myself, pulled my own bags out of the trunk, and nearly got hit when he tore away. And the whole time, from just outside the car, I could still hear both his music and his wife’s screeching in crystal-clear sound. Oh, and since the airline he’d dropped me off at was on the completely wrong side of the airport, I ended up missing my flight. But hey… at least his wife got her f****** eggs.)
(My wife works for a bakery and I help out sometimes. The recipe sheets are starting to look messy with all the changes written on them, and some of the steps aren’t in order. I decide to retype them with the changes and email them to the owner to print. The next day I walk into the bakery and the owner hands me the stack of recipes.)
Owner: “My husband made a few small changes.”
Me: *internally* “Oh, no… No, he can’t be that stupid.”
(He was that stupid. Her husband knew nothing about baking. One of his “changes” was replacing every instance of buttermilk with regular milk. He also reordered the list of ingredients, which I had put in the order they needed to be added to the batter.)
