Apparently, my lovely wife never attended bed-making 101 or even a remedial blanket-folding workshop. This, I found out one morning while trying to make her parent’s bed, on which we slept last night while house-sitting. Yes, sleeping with your significant other on his/her parents bed is somewhat creepy.
“No, that’s not how it goes. The other way. No, the… how is it that I’m now holding one of YOUR corners?” I called out.
“Well, if you’d stop for a second I could get my bearings…” She replied.
“What ‘bearings’? Who are you? Magellan? We’re folding a blanket, woman!” At this she whipped the blanket to get an errant fold out of it, pulling both corners out of my hands, making us start over. I looked at her with a contemptuous glint in my eye and folded my arms. She smiled sheepishly.
“Well… you should have been holding those corners a little firmer…” she mumbled. “I’ll show you who’s a sea-faring explorer…”
“If you’d just not whip it like that, this would go a lot quicker, and I could be back to my toast and the crossword puzzle.” I said, as I bent down to pick up my corners again. She gave the thing another little whip to ’straighten it out’ that ends up with one of the corners flicking me right in the eye.
“Arg! Do you see what I mean?! What did I just say?” I said.
“I don’t know. Weren’t you listening either?” she said flippantly.
(On a side note, why is it that when you sustain an injury to the head, such as getting flicked in the eye or maybe getting slapped in the side of the head, why is it that you clutch the injury and limp? Where does the limp come from?)
Finally we wrestled the folded blanket into the closet and closed the door. There. It’s gone now. Out of sight, out of mind.
“OWWW!!” she cries out, as we put pillows on the bed.
“What?! What’s wrong?!”
“I’ve got something in my foot!”
“Like what? A needle? A pin? A pebble? A complex series of ligaments and bones?” Alright, that last one was a bit cheeky.
“No, dammit, come here and check it out.”
On my way over, somehow, the bottom of my t-shirt got caught on the corner post of the decorative foot of the bed. Not noticing, I continued a few quick steps forward to aid my wife and was then flung stumbling backwards (”Urk!”), sort of slung-shot by the elasticity of my shirt-hem. I remained on my feet, though. My wife looked up at me from examining her foot, having missed this rather cartoon-ish event.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” she said impatiently.
“You didn’t just see that or hear me go ‘Urk!’?”
“No, but I’m in pain here!”
I shrugged and walked over, without incident this time. I bent down to look at her foot. Nothing. I rubbed my hand over the bottom of her foot and she squeaked from the tickle. Nothing. I looked up at her, disbelieving.
“Don’t you look at me like that. There was something in there. It’s probably still in the carpet. Look in the carpet.” she says.
I felt around through the carpet on hands and knees for a few minutes while she hopped around on one foot.
“Nothing. Apparently you’re imagining the pain in your foot.” I stated.
“I’m going to imagine my hand smacking you upside the head in moment.”
“It’s that sort of remark that will encourage a jury to find you guilty of my murder years from now.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think it’ll be years from now?”
“Oh, I’m so scared. What are you going to do? Limp over here and smother me with a poorly-folded blanket?”
She picks a pillow off the bed and throws it at me and I deftly block it with my face. I pick one up and throw it at her, which misses horribly. We stand there for a minute glaring at each other.
“I’m finished fighting.” my wife says, dropping her scowl.
“I never was fighting, really.” I replied, as we left the somewhat straightened-up bedroom to go back to the kitchen.
Such is love.
