Two Loves
By Bob Stevens, The Muddled Male
Several years ago I told
you of the problems I had created for myself in an attempt to satisfy the
demands of two lovers. I repeat that
confession here as an introduction to my current problem. It is an example of what goes around, comes
around …. albeit in a slightly different form.
And now to my previous confession:
If you see me wandering
around with my head in my hands it isn't a migraine, it is simply that the two
loves of my life are not getting along.
It is probably my fault. I have
tried, but being male I am, by default, insensitive, inattentive, and overly
involved in mundane, technical things.
I'm not certain how one man deals with two loves whose needs and tastes
are so completely opposite. The one
thing I know for certain is that I would have failed as a polygamist.
My current state of pain
all started when Ann, my first love, curled up on my lap, ran her fingers
through my hair, and cooed, "I want
you to tell me that you love me more than your iPhone or your computer.” I should have known she had a jealous streak
since she had been demanding more and more of my time the past couple of
weeks. Almost as if she was purposely
and selfishly trying to keep me too busy to be with my second love, the digital
one.
So in the interest of
peace I grabbed a slip of paper and hurriedly wrote, "I love you more than my iPhone and my computer, together or
separately." Things were going
great until she noticed that on the back of the paper I had written, "Note
to self: apologize to iPhone and computer later."
So now you know. My head is in my hands in an attempt to cover
my black eye. Ann claims that my eye
can't hurt nearly as much as her heart, but I know that all it takes to make
her feel better is a power outage or a battery failure.
And now to my current
problem. When we left the hill above
Bear Lake and moved to Logan, one of the advantages we expected to find was
closeness to stores. In fact, we live
close enough to a Wal*Mart store that we could walk, if I could get up enough
courage to sprint through the roundabout that sits at the halfway point. So not having such courage we choose to
drive, and that is the first half of our new problem. As an engineer it is imperative that I park
our car exactly centered between and parallel to the two lines that define the
parking stall. That would appear to be
an easy task, except that the approach is narrow and the process of dodging
people and carts and other cars as I try to line up with the parking stall causes
me to end up in a way that provokes Ann, my wife, to respond with such taunts
as, “The car is in crooked, you’re too
close to this side, or you’re too close to the curb.” And so I begin the process of see sawing back
and forth in an attempt to get the proper alignment.
But when we finally get
settled squarely in the stall, another problem begins. Ann, who is kind and tender hearted and
always wanting to make things better for others, begins scurrying around the
parking lot gathering up shopping carts that have been left all over the place
by thoughtless shoppers. “Ann,” I counsel in a stern voice, “they have young men who are paid to do
that. Let them do their job.” But Ann keeps collecting and moving carts
into their parking stall. Since we moved
here we have been to the parking lot dozens of time but have never quite made
it into the store.
Well, maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but if you come to Wal*Mart
in the evening and you see an old man see sawing in and out of a parking stall,
and his wife scurrying around gathering up shopping carts, that will be
us. Be certain to wave as you go into
and out of the store. We will still be
there.
