Sunday, March 8, 2009

The Old Coat


I recently threw my old coat away. One might have considered it an outdoorsman’s coat but it didn’t come close to its replacement - the ultimate outdoor coat - an oil permeated Filson.

My old coat was just slightly less-manly, so last night when my wife and I went to town, I was surprised to see her wearing it. "I thought I threw that thing away." I said. "Ya," she responded, "but I thought it made me look like a rancher's wife." I really didn't like it on her so later that evening I broached the subject, "That coat just doesn't flatter you. It's not very feminine." She seemed to take my left-handed compliment in good stride and I thought that was the end of it.

The thing is, today after church, I forgot to help-her-on with her coat. Not the old one, but the feminine version she wears to church. She noted it rather irritatingly and so in jest I said, "Ya, and I'm not opening the car door either." I mean come-on, it was a joke, right and everyone knows men aren't sensitive so why even pretend? As you can imagine, I got the silent-treatment on the drive home. Finally she broke the silence, "You know, last night you said I wasn't feminine enough. Then you don't help-me-on with my coat or even open the car door for me. You can't have it both ways. If you want a feminine wife, you've got to treat me like a lady!"

I thought about it for a few seconds, weighed my options and finally said, "You can keep the coat."
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Just so you don't think I'm a total oaf, I normally help my wife with her coat, open doors for her and in general treat her like the classy lady that she is. On this particular occasion we both laughed so hard that I almost had to pull the truck over for fear of an accident – the traffic kind as well as the other kind.