TWO PEAS IN A POD

I have written many stories about life with my husband, Bryon.  Most of them are part of a collection titled “Honey Signed The Waiver”, which is still looking for a publisher.  However, this story was written more recently, and is not part of the original collection.

COPYCAT

Last week Honey and I were both sporting blood soaked bandages on our hands.  My injury happened first.  Sadly, though, sometimes when I do something unusually stupid, Honey will come behind me and do the exact same thing.  I haven’t been able to ascertain whether he does that because he doesn’t believe I could do something so dumb and he has to see for himself, or if he loves me so much he doesn’t want me to feel alone in my misery.

            The first time this phenomenon happened was when I still drove my 1986 Chrysler Le Baron.  It was not a fancy car and at twenty years old, it was starting to feel its age.  It was a dark and rainy Friday night in November when I went shopping at the local Zellers store.  I was looking for ideas for Christmas presents but didn’t buy anything.  When I returned to my car in the parking lot, I got inside and, even though the overhead light was no longer working, automatically slid my key into the ignition.  I had performed this action in the dark many times before, but this time there was a problem.  The key could only be inserted with the correct side facing up, and I had pushed it in upside down.  It was indeed stuck.  It would not come out and it was not going to turn the car on, either.

            This was before I had corrective surgeries on my legs, so I was using a walker and had to pull it out of the car again to go back in the store for help.  Nor did I have my own cell phone at that time.  The kind clerk at the Customer Service desk let me use their phone.  I tried calling Honey at home but he didn’t answer.  The clerk lent me a phone book and I called a locksmith instead.

            “This is after closing hours, so we charge overtime rates, minimum one hour charge of $150.00,” I was told.  I had to agree because I wasn’t going to spend the night in a parking lot.  I thanked the store clerk and went outside to wait in the rain with my walker and my credit card.  It took the locksmith less than two minutes to remove my key from the ignition.  He gave me his business card with my receipt.  He must have known I was married to Honey.

            When I got home, damp and bedraggled and fearing I had blown my shopping budget, I found Honey getting out of the tub from a long soak.  He had been working outside at a sawmill all day and that was his way of getting warm again.

            “Buy any Christmas presents for the kids?” he asked.

            “No, shopping has to wait for my next payday,” I told him, and then explained my misadventure.

            “How could that happen?  The key won’t go in the wrong way!”  He was adamant.

            “But it did.  And it cost me $150.00 plus tax!” I fumed.

            That’s when Honey had to check for himself.  He took his copy of the key to my car, and went outside in the dark and the rain.  He opened the car door and sat in the driver’s seat and deliberately put the key in the ignition upside down.  It was stuck.  It wouldn’t come out and it wouldn’t turn the car on, either.  Without saying a word, I handed him the locksmith’s card.

            The locksmith was nonplussed to see me and my car again when he arrived.  “How could you do that a second time, so soon?” he asked.  I explained that Honey didn’t believe me and tried to demonstrate that I’d been mistaken.  He laughed and told me he could now afford a plane ticket for a Christmas holiday, as I handed him Honey’s credit card.

            The next time Honey tried to replicate my quirky behavior was after I bought an unusual apparatus at a liquidation store.  It purported to be a digitally controlled leg massaging unit that would miraculously massage the whole length of both legs simultaneously.  For the twenty dollar purchase price, I couldn’t resist.  Tormented with leg pains for many, many years from previous injuries sustained in a car accident, the thought of a self-massaging thing-a-ma-jig with a hand held electronic control was irresistible.  Of course I bought it.

            I took it out of the box and unfolded all the parts and read the instructions.  This I did one day when Honey was at work and not likely to disturb me.  First I dressed myself in the leg-length wraps that reminded me of motorcycle chaps.  These fastened with heavy duty Velcro tape, much like the cuff of a machine that takes your blood pressure.  Next, I sat in my recliner with my legs up in front of me.  I plugged the cord into the power bar beside my chair.  Looking forward to twenty minutes of uninterrupted massage, I pressed the start button.  Slowly the cuffs inflated and started squeezing my legs.  Hard.  And then harder still.  Just like a blood pressure cuff wrapped too tight, the pain was excruciating.

After a couple of minutes the leg wraps deflated and I thought I should try getting out of the contraption.  As I looked at the control and saw there was no off switch, the cuffs started inflating again.  Once turned on, the cycle would go for twenty minutes.  I was sitting on top of the Velcro closures, so I couldn’t undo them without standing up, which I couldn’t do fast enough between inflations.  And I couldn’t reach the power bar to unplug the thing unless I first put my recliner in the upright sitting position, which I couldn’t do with my legs in balloons.  I was stuck and in pain for twenty minutes.

As they say, patience is a virtue.  After twenty minutes the control beeped, the legs deflated and I was able to free myself.  I collected all the parts and carefully bundled them back into the box along with the instructions.  I wasn’t able to return it to the liquidation store as all sales were final, but I thought I would send it to the local thrift store and hopefully somebody smaller and thinner could get some use out of it.  I put it beside the front door so I would remember to take it with me and drop it off the next time I went out.

Before that happened, though, Honey came home and saw it.

“What’s this?” he asked.  I told him what it was supposed to do, and what my actual experience had been like.  “Oh, yeah?” he said.  “I could use something like that after a hard day working on a strapping machine.”

I tried dissuading him, to no avail.  After supper he retreated to his own recliner, carrying the boxed torture machine.  I watched him read the instructions and then strap himself into the leg wraps.

“You might want to leave some room for inflation and not wrap yourself up so tight,” I suggested, but Honey wasn’t listening.  He was used to making sure strapping machines he worked on would wrap huge loads of lumber as tight as possible, so he instinctively did the same with the Velcro fasteners.

“Honey, you really don’t want to do this.  You’ll be sorry.”  But he was deaf to my warning.  He plugged in the cord, sat in his recliner with his legs up, and pressed the start button.  As the cuffs slowly inflated, he said, “This could work.”

When the cuffs just kept inflating and started squeezing his legs, hard, he clenched his hands and tried not to grimace.  I just watched.  When the cuffs deflated the first time, he looked relieved, but then fearful when they started inflating again right away.  “How do you turn this thing off?” he asked.

“You don’t.  It goes for twenty minutes whether you want it to or not.”

“Well, just unplug it for me then,” he said.

“I can’t.  You plugged it in behind your chair, where I can’t reach because your chair is extended with you in it.”  I really thought Honey deserved twenty minutes of non-stop leg massage for not believing me in the first place.  After that experience, Honey took the apparatus to the thrift store himself.

This last time that Honey copied my behavior, he was just trying to be helpful.  I was in the process of preparing a sweet and sour chicken dish for the slow cooker, and I had to open a can of pineapple.  The one I had bought had a lid with a pull-back tab on it, like a beer can.  Only the pineapple can was made of much heavier metal than a lightweight aluminum beer can.  As I pulled the tab, I managed a three-quarter inch long, deep cut, on my thumb.  Leaving the can only partially opened, I grabbed some paper towelling to staunch the blood flow, and raced by Honey and up the stairs in search of my first aid kit.

Honey didn’t follow me to help, even though he has his first aid certificate he got at work.  He doesn’t think it applies at home, though.  I assumed he was going to pour himself another cup of coffee and go back to reading the newspaper.  But there on the counter was my abandoned can of pineapple just begging for his attention.  Since he’s the man of the house called on to open stubborn jars, I guess he thought the half-opened can would be a cinch.  By the time I came downstairs, Honey was sporting blood-soaked towelling of his own.  However, the lid of the can was nowhere to be seen.  For that I was grateful to the dear man.

So you see, I still don’t know what Honey’s reasoning is sometimes.  Maybe it’s his way of showing the world we are definitely an undefinable couple, sometimes too difficult to explain.

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By Lisa A. Hatton