I sat at the table in the dining room, blissfully cleaning the lead and powder residue out of my .45.
The clean, crisp odor of powder solvent was in the air, mixed with a hint of gun and reel lube as I used a technical oil pen to deposit a drop on each rail. A that moment, just as I was pushing the slide back against the tension of the recoil spring in reassembly, a voice behind me said, “WHAT ON EARTH are you doing on my dining room table?!”
Startled, my hand slipped off the slide and it shot across the room to put a nice dent in the textured sheet rock on the far wall. It was followed by the recoil spring and barrel bushing, making a PA-DING sound as they ricocheted off the wall behind the slide.
The lady of the house had once again silently materialized behind me, somehow entering the house noiselessly after a trip to the garden center.
There she stood, fuming at the fumes, one hand on her hip and the other holding yet another potted plant, “I cannot believe you’re doing that in the house. Why don’t you clean your guns in the garage?”
Instead of trying the previous failed explanation of why it was important to have a clean, dust free environment to clean a precision instrument like a Kimber 1911, I decided perhaps this time the best defence would be to go on the offence.
“Well, I can’t believe you’re standing there with a bucket of dirt with a bundle of weeds growing in it to set somewhere else in the house. You already have the place looking like a rain forest.” I retorted.
The best defence is NOT a good offence…or vice-versa.
The glare she gave me made me suddenly happy that my .45 was currently disassembled, unloaded and out of her reach.
“Sorry, Dear,” I mumbled. I quickly gathered my supplies and typically useless weaponry and humbly skulked out of the dining room en route to the garage, scraping against the wall in order not to come within her reach as I went by.
I’ve had friends who parked their motorcycles in their living rooms. I’ve had friends who left their socks on the bedroom floor overnight and awakened alive the next morning. I’ve had friends who drank directly from the milk carton and then stuck it back in the fridge, and they survived.
Of course, none of those friends were married.
So us married guys know there are certain things that women will not, can not, tolerate. It is sinful and disgusting to them for us to clip our toenails in the living room. It is the epitome of violations for us to leave the toilet seat up.
But there are things that women do which perplex their husbands beyond sanity as well. Most of the time we choose to ignore them rather than mention it and forfeit our safety as we sleep at night.
For instance:
Why do they raise plants indoors? They are always after us to clean up, yet they store buckets of dirt with writhing green masses growing out of them all about the house. And if you sneeze, you’d best just take a Zyrtec and keep your mouth shut. Any hint that her plants are causing it is tantamount to calling them weeds.
Why do so many of them keep cats instead of dogs? If your dog weighed 500 pounds he’d still be your best friend. If your cat weighed 500 lbs it would eat you.
Why do they ask you why there are so many females in your FaceBook friends list and then ask you what you’re trying to hide when you un-friend all but the 50 guys the next day?
Why do the 100 female friends you un-friended in FaceBook who you haven’t actually seen or talked to since high school 30 years ago write emails that sound as if you served them with surprise divorce papers after they discover you’re no longer their FaceBook friend?
Why do they allow their husbands to live after he posts a blog entry like this? I dunno, but that’s partially why I love her…all the mystery.
Fellas, I’m sure you have plenty of your own to add, just leave them in the comments section.
As for me, I gotta go. We have friends coming over tomorrow and I refused to “not volunteer” to help clean house tonight.
