Stupid Husband Tricks

Let me make one thing perfectly clear:  my husband is not stupid.  He is, in fact, a brilliant and accomplished scholar, a gifted surgeon, and a well-read, Renaissance man.  But for all his intellectual greatness, he is a hopeless klutz at home, guilty of huge breaches in common knowledge and common sense.  This dichotomy between his workhead and his homehead is so pronounced that I often accuse him of planned incompetence.  He demonstrates such a pattern of uselessness that I exempt him from household duties.  Let’s face it; some things are just easier to do myself.

One of the dangers of living with such a man is that he often tries to cover up his indiscretions.  For example, he will break a glass bowl all over the kitchen and then hastily clean it up, going so far as to take out the telltale trash.  Unfortunately, his tidying skills reflect a lack of attention to detail.  On one such occasion, he left so many pieces of glass on the floor that I cut my foot the next morning.  On the other hand, had he fessed up to the deed, I would have known instantly that the kitchen needed a thorough vacuuming and would have avoided bare feet for a few days.

I live in a constant state danger.  The more time my husband spends alone in our home, the higher the risk to my life and limb.  One day, I came home from a rather stressful business trip nearly delirious with exhaustion.  My husband offered to feed the kids while I stretched out on the sofa to rest.  I went into the living room—a room we rarely use—to put up my feet and close my eyes.  While I was adjusting the throw pillows to cradle my head, I noticed small dots—like chocolate sprinkles—along the back of the sofa.  I called out for my husband, “What is this stuff all over the couch?”  My eyes began to focus, allowing me to see that there were well over a few little flecks.  In fact I was lying in them.

At this point my husband made his way to the living room entrance and was mumbling something I did not quite grasp while I continued to process what I was finding.  Before I could register his words, something cracked me hard on the head, as if I were hit from behind by an intruder.  I lost my bearings momentarily, but I could have sworn that things were flying in circles around the room.  After a few seconds I was hit again, only this time it was more like something had used me as a launch pad.  I started waving my hands around my head in self-defense, closing my eyes and dropping to the floor.  With my arms wrapped around my head, I opened my eyes and looked down on the ground.  There were more of the little brown specks.

Suddenly it was quiet.  My husband looked at me sheepishly, not moving from his perch at the doorway.  He seemed unconcerned.  “It’s nothing,” he said.  

“What did you do!?” I demanded. 

He explained that he had removed the cast iron trap that fit over the fireplace in the adjoining library because he had been considering trying to light a fire.  Our home was an 1880 farmhouse built around a central chimney.  There were back-to-back fireplaces on the first floor that also opened up into two of the bedrooms upstairs.  When he removed the covering, a “family” of squirrels raced into the house.  They ran around for a while and he managed to chase most of them back up the chimney and then replaced the heavy iron cover.  But he could not be sure if they all retreated; in fact, he was not at all surprised that one remained in the house.  Of course, all I could think about was the fact that I had lay in squirrel droppings and now had them stuck in my hair and all over my clothes.

Now, squirrels are basically flying rats that carry G-d-knows-what diseases.  We had two small children in the house.  After my husband made a valiant (probably 30 second) effort to locate the crazy squirrel he simply forgot about it.  Out of sight, out of mind.  We now had a health hazard loose in our home.

Fortunately, the nasty critter was probably getting hungry, which brought him out of hiding.  We managed to scare the feisty beast into the downstairs bathroom and close the door.  I called animal control and waited, while my husband got the kids out of the house.  At last the doorbell rang, and the biggest, scariest woman entered; she carried a small cage and wore big, thick gloves.  Before entering the bathroom, she warned me not to open the door no matter what I heard until she knocked three times.

I think I could do a better job illustrating what happened next if I were a cartoon artist.  Imagine the visible white hash marks that indicate incessant banging from inside the room while the door itself pushes elastically from the inside until it bulges visibly from its hinges.  The noises that emanated sounded like a dozen gangsters were knocking each other senseless.  It was clear the squirrel was running around and around from floor to ceiling.  Suddenly there was quiet.  Then the animal control woman let out a mortal yell, followed by, “F*#@&, he bit me!”  The nasty creature chomped right through her massive gloves and drew blood between her index finger and thumb.

I do not know whether my husband ever considered how much worse this scenario could have been.  He kept away with the kids for a long time.  He knew there would be stern words and even worse, intensive cleaning chores.  I spent hours vacuuming and mopping.  I had to have the sofa shampooed, and even then I never sat on it again until it was eventually reupholstered.

After thirty years of marriage, I am at a loss for how to motivate my husband to apply the level of analytical scrutiny at home that he reserves for his work.  He can scan pages of data tables and know intuitively that a p value is wrong, yet he cannot see a dried piece of spinach on a white porcelain plate when it is removed from the dishwasher.    I guess that’s how I know that he will always need me around.