Plots and Schemes

I have been thinking about this for a while and have finally decided to organize my thoughts on this issue on the printed (or posted) page. I am not the same man I was when I got married. And this has not been an accidental transformation. This has been an orchestrated plot by a mastermind of subtle pressure and conditioning. My wife has done this to me!

Let's start with some of the little things. The devil is, after all, in the details. I used to roll up my socks into little balls in my sock drawer. It was clean and efficient. They took up very little room and they were a viable option as projectile weapons if a burglar ever broke in and I could not get to the kitchen knives.

Now I fold them together. They apparently lay flatter in the drawer. And they supposedly don't stretch out and sag down your calves if you put them away this way. She also pointed out that this would keep us from having to buy new socks so soon, since we would not have to throw so many away so quickly.

I quietly scoffed at this last thought. What self-respecting male throws away socks? If they have holes, you can slide them over. As long as you are wearing shoes, they can't slide completely off your foot. And just how are you supposed to subdue a burglar with limp, droopy socks? Nobody is scared of limp, droopy socks.

And yet, I now fold my socks. I am not even sure exactly when it happened. I think I remember seeing folded socks in my sock drawer and maybe it just grew from there. But it is all such a foggy mess of a memory that I can't be sure. Could by Rohypnol.

I have book shelves. And not ones built into the apartment that you are just stuck with and not ones that have cinder blocks on each end. No. I have three separate book shelves that we went out and bought and then assembled together. And these are not the pressed sawdust, affordable jobbers you can get from Walmart either. These bad boys are real cherry wood that cost more than the all the books we have placed on them.

Now, I am a prolific reader and I have always had a ton of books around, but I have kept them the way the Archangel Gabriel told Elijah that books should be kept - in brown liquor store boxes found near a green dumpster. And this storage method, ordained by Angelic decree, had its practical side as well. When you ran out of beer money and needed to sell your books at the Half-Price Book store, they were already boxed up! And boxed up in liquor boxes - to be exchanged for beer money - the Circle of Life made manifest! Amen.

But I, like Samson, let a woman lead me into wickedness. Now our books are on shelves in the living room. They are even grouped by genre - blatant segregationist thinking. And some of them are even turned outward so that you can see the pretty covers! Some of my old liquor box books did not even have their covers any more - they were tough books made for readin'. Not pretty boy books posing on a shelf like a trollop on a street corner!

There is floss in my house. And not just that 22 inch roll that you get in the crappy gift bag from the dentist either. You know the bag - the one with the off brand toothpaste that is basil flavored. Who the heck has ever heard of basil flavored toothpaste? And the off-brand name - Crist - like we are gonna confuse that with Crest?

But back to the point - there is floss in my house. Flavored stuff too. Sometimes wintergreen or spearmint or even cinnamon. Just like the cigarette companies before them, the wax string industry keeps trying to get folks hooked on their product younger and younger and are using candy flavors to get there. And I have this stuff in my HOME!

And she only pretends to care about the environment. Don't be fooled. Every meal that we have here at home, we use PAPER napkins. That's right. After years and years of environmental responsibility, I have let her lead me into killing trees left and right. It was not always this way. For years I saved tree after tree through the use of shirt sleeves (for various food items around the area of the mouth) and pants legs (for anything left on the hand that might make my beer bottle slippery). And I was good at this. I was a master. My technique of wiping my mouth with my bare hand and then going to the pants leg while wearing a tank top is a classic move that several bars offer in a brochure. It was actually featured on the Hooters website!

And now I am just another mass murderer of trees. Again, I have no idea when this happened. I remember having a great juicy burger. The kind where it runs down your arm. I was doing my best to lick it off before it got to my elbow - you can't get squat once it reaches the dark side of your elbow - when I felt this horribly rough sensation running up my arm.

It left my arm dry and slightly red pink. Like a red-headed kid who had been out in the sun too long. And then the paper towel was sitting by my plate. Eventually it started being at the table before I was - sitting there all smug underneath my silverware. Damn it.

I own at least 12 towels. Twelve! I spent the vast majority of my single life with just 2 towels. One sat in the dirty laundry while the other hung up on the shower curtain rod drying out for the next use. Once the crust set in, you would wash it. The other one just sat in the dirty laundry. Don't know why it never got washed or used but the stinking process worked! I got out of the shower and I got dry! And it did not require a dozen towels that all matched the "color scheme" of the bathroom.

That's right. The bathroom has a "color scheme". Considering the vast majority of the things that happen in a rest room, does it really require interior design artistry? My lord, we used to crap in woods and now we have bathrooms with "color schemes". Schemes. Schemes. My God, this time she wasn't even trying to hide her manipulations, was she?

Makes you wonder why. Why would a man put up this wholesale destruction of his way of life. Why would he allow someone to lead him down these roads which man alone was never destined to travel?

Simple. She sleeps with me. :)