Musings of a Muddled Male

The Vote
Bob Stevens
The Muddled Male 

 

      I was pretty bummed, election night, when the inevitable set in and the news anchors were falling all over themselves to brag about how they already knew the winners and losers even though some polls were still open and there was still a ton of votes to count.  Of course things could have been worse.  Roseanne Barr was a candidate for president on the ballot in some states.  I hear that she even received enough votes to place 6^th in the nation.  Just think of the chaos in the world if she had won.  Actually, after pondering that possibility, I realized that Roseanne has already developed an ability to handle the feral pigs that have been trying to eat the macadamia nut crop on her farm in Hawaii, and I had to admit that she just might have the right experience to deal with a balky congress hesitant to do anything to keep us from going over the coming financial cliff. 

      While I was lamenting the terrible state of the world Ann, my wife, said, "Well you aren't perfect either, you know."  Now I admit that her comment took me completely by surprise.   Not that she felt that I wasn't perfect, but that she found out so quickly.  We have only been married a little more than fifty-seven years and I was hoping that it would take longer than that for her to notice.  So, thinking that I might be able to squirm out from under any teensy flaw she mistakenly thought she had uncovered, I foolishly challenged her to list even one flaw she felt I had.  Particularly, I told her, I wanted to hear of one that stands out because it is a burden to her. 

      "To begin with," she began, "You always place your pants the wrong way on the hanger when you hang them up after wearing them.  And you always leave the kitchen cupboard doors open after you take out or return a dish."  Well I ran from the kitchen to our master closet to prove her wrong, only to bump into an open cupboard door on the way.  When I got to the closet I found that I had indeed muffed the pants hanging test.  For those who haven't been to our home, my pants are all hanging on the low rod on the south side of the master closet with the rod running east and west.  Every pair of pants that Ann had hung for me had the seat facing me with the seat dangling on the east side of the hanger, a fact that I had never noticed.  The four that I had worn, since the last wash and then remembered to re-hang, had the seat facing me, but the seat was dangling on the west side of the hanger, a fact that she not only noticed, she marked it as a sign of imperfection.  I tried to convince her that an alternating pattern of "seat on the east, seat on the west" added a nice balancing touch to our closet, but she would have none of it. 

      So I did what any normal husband does when faced with having committed such a faux pas; I groveled.  So If you pass me on the street and hear me muttering, "seat on the east, seat on the east," just be aware that I am a flawed husband in the process of being re-trained.