CHAPTER ONE
“ME TIME” “Sheila…how come you can’t push the lawn mower back closer to the garage wall? Why do you have to leave it so dang close to the door?” I closed the door behind me while I tried to contain the true degree of my frustration. As I approached Sheila I noticed that she had the phone to her ear, but I still continued addressing my concern with the lawn mower. “I almost smashed my headlight again, you know! I told you to just let me cut the grass anyways then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now!”
“Ugh… John, whatever! You want me to let you cut the grass? You don’t even cut it right…that’s why I have to! If I let you do it then the neighborhood kids might think we got a go-kart track over here.” She waved me off like I was a ‘nobody’ and spun around to return to her telephone conversation.
After realizing that it would be a waste of my time and energy to continue in this debate, I took off my shoes and stood exhausted. Then, irritated that she was talking on the phone in the first place, I watched her closely as she began to prepare some dishwater. She seemed to be really enjoying her conversation as she worked. After a while she turned her attention back to me.
“You okay?” She asked sarcastically.
I continued my observation of her as I thought to myself “Is she even the least bit happy I’m home?” I could sense that she was on edge so instead of provoking an all out cut-throat argument I simply responded, “I’m fine Honey; just admiring your beauty!”
She rolled her eyes as hard as she could. I guess she could tell by my tone that I was being “funny” so that was my cue to head towards the living room.
“Girl…did you hear that?” She started after she thought I was out of ear shot. “He is tripping; just walks in complaining about the stupid lawn mower. Then he’s standing here watching me like I’m a basketball game! Oh my god…! I guess he’s mad because I don’t like him cutting the grass. What sane man would be mad about that? That’s one less thing he has to do, right?”
Going on with her conversation “I don’t know, girl. He knows I like things a certain way. By now, I would think he would just leave me alone. It’s not like I ask him to do a whole lot around here. I do so much around this house moving the lawn mower out of the way is the least he can do. Cutting the grass was the hard part!”
Yeah, I’ll admit, I was deliberately eaves-dropping in on her conversation, so I leaned my head back into the kitchen “Shelia, can you please stop talking about me? I can hear you, you know.”
After a small pause she yelled back, “Then maybe you can take the advice and just move it next time without complaining and I wouldn’t have anything to talk about!”
“My god…she is a beast! You’d thought I called her mama out of her name. I just asked her to stop talking about me and she had to get slick mouthed. She’s talking to me like I’m some kind of punk. See, that’s how women get smacked; then they want to yell domestic abuse like they’re so innocent. “Sheila, chill out!” Of course she still didn’t shut up. So, I tried changing my tone a little because I really just wanted her to spend some time with me. I just wanted some attention from my wife.
“Sheila…Sheila,” I begged trying my best to reverse whatever this was we were having. “Can you please hang up the phone so we can just talk to each other like normal people?”
“Talk about what?” She yelled folding her nose as if she had just gotten a whiff of some sort of bad odor.
“Talk about, what…I’ve been at work all day!”
