11-006
Things I Cannot be Trusted With?
When couples have been together a while, often they can accurately predict each other’s behaviors, moods, and
opinions. Some even develop shorthand
methods for communicating.
Our son is friends with
a very clever girl, who deftly analyzed
all of his annoying traits and devised a code to facilitate communication.
For example, when she wants him to stop
analyzing her every single act, she simply
says, “Number one!” When she peevishly
says, “Number two”, that means she wants him to quit whining about his job, and
so forth. He, however, fails to appreciate the elegance of this approach.
A shared history also reveals your partner’s strengths and
weaknesses. Through hard experience, my wife has learned all the things with
which I am not to be trusted. Generally these are things that I can spill, lose, break, forget,
stain, injure myself with, or require the use of willpower. Some
examples are as follows:
- All you can eat
buffets- In addition to obvious quantity issues, I tend to choose odd combinations that put off my fellow
diners.
- Power tools-
I concede that I cannot use any tool without the eventual shedding of
blood and power tools increase the
mayhem geometrically.
- Preventative
maintenance- I have always suspected that this is a vast conspiracy to waste
time and money. I’ve owned several vehicles that technically
never had an oil change, only occasional supplements.
- The laundry-
Whether it involves detergent, choosing the right cycle, or discriminating hand from machine washables, I’m in over
my head.
- Campfires: I have yet to live down the camping
trip when the can of Coleman®
fuel, I was squirting on a smoldering log, ignited.
- Receipts: For just once I would like to make
it from the Wal-Mart cash register to the door without losing my
receipt. At his best, Houdini could not vanish a receipt any quicker.
- Bleach – I have ruined
countless articles of clothing
through the non-judicial use of
bleach and once I , inadvisedly
used concentrated bleach to clean a pool deck
while barefoot.
- Pain pills-
Although I know better, if I have pain pills in my possession, I will always take every one. I
subscribe to Rudner’s philosophy: “No pain, no pain”.
- Hot Liquids-
While I never received third degree burns, like the
woman, who sued McDonalds® , my
penchant for spilling makes any hot liquid a scalding hazard.
It is hard to believe that as a child I was allowed made toy soldiers from molten lead. Luckily, I had
a thick asbestos apron and gloves.
- Glue-
While I have never actually glued any body parts together requiring surgery, I have
ruined numerous shirts and tabletops. When I made plastic models in my youth,
everything I made, invariably had a gluey thumbprint on the windshield. Still
I persevered. Of course, with the glue
back then, assembling a plastic Jaguar XKE was roughly equivalent to drinking a quart of gin.