I MET MY WIFE-TO-BE MORE THAN 50 years ago. And we’ve been each other’s best friends ever since. So you’d think, by now, we would’ve stopped annoying each other – right?
Well, NO, actually – far from it!
I still annoy her when I crunch my breakfast cereal, or breathe out-loud when we’re watching TV. She still annoys me when she plucks my nostril-hairs, or tells me how to drive.
I still hate it when she eats apples in bed – she sounds like a rock-crusher. She still hates it when I dunk my biscuits – especially when the soggy bit breaks off and sinks – especially when it’s HER cup of tea.
She believes a sneeze is a health-hazard that should be avoided at all costs. I believe a sneeze is a blessing that should be loudly enjoyed.
And if we happen to lose things or can’t find things, we still annoy each other like you wouldn’t believe. Take this morning, for example, when I lost my glasses.
I’d taken them off in the shower, and hung them on the little hook – just like I always do. Then I’d taken them off the hook, and put them down while I got dressed.
But somewhere in the process, they went missing.
Now, a man should be allowed to lose his glasses without being treated like an idiot. But, over the next half hour, my wife couldn’t help herself …
“What are you looking for,” she asked, as I kept retracing my steps from bathroom to bedroom.
“My glasses,” I muttered. “I’ve lost them.”
“You can’t have lost them,” she announced knowingly, in a voice she once reserved for growling at her kids. “Where did you last have them?” So I explained – and she walked me back through bathroom and bedroom like I was some kind of dim-witted moron, checking every possible hiding place.
“Well,” she finally declared in exasperation, “I don’t know. You ought to be more careful with your stuff.”
But then, five minutes later, having rebuked and humbled me, she called out from the other room: “Oh, here they are, darling.”
“Where did you find them,” I enquired, glad to be reunited with my missing specs.
“Um … on my head,” she confessed reluctantly. “I must’ve picked them up, thinking they were my sunglasses.”
I forgave her, of course, as I always do. And she made some hot cheese scones, to get back in my good books. Which she was, of course, almost immediately.
JOHN, GRAPEVINE’S FOUNDING EDITOR, ADMITS: “I’D RATHER WATCH PAINT PEEL THAN GO GIFT-SHOPPING WITH MY WIFE!”
