One night in the mid-1980’s, about an hour after I dozed off as best I can calculate, Dona shook me awake and said “Do you hear that?” Instantly alert, I recited the oath of the woken husband “I wasn’t asleep, dear.” Dona said “Athena’s hocking up a hairball in the living room just outside our bedroom door. Can you get it before it soaks into the carpet?” Several minutes of throaty cacking always foretold Athena’s imminent gastric events. “Snoork” I said, having returned to the dragons of Eden. “Wake up!” she said as she gave me a sharp jab in the side. Now fully awake, I immediately began to review the situation. “Again with the ribs?” I yelped. “What did my ribcage ever do to you?” “Athena’s ralphing in the living room” Dona repeated. “You need to clean it up before it stains the carpet.” “You woke me up to walk around right past your side of the bed and clean up cat puke?” I whined. “What, your ass is glued to the mattress?” “Please, honey, can you get it?” she cooed in that sweet compelling voice that women have used to make us do all sorts of stupid things for millions of years. We didn’t evolve our way out of the trees to become scavengers. Some poor ape’s wife shook him awake on a tree limb in Olduvai several thousand millennia ago and grunted “Honey, I’m hungry. Would you go steal some brindled gnu carcass from that pack of snarling hyenas, please?” And the idiot went. “Yes, dear” I said, one more idiot in an unbroken line. I put one foot on the floor and stepped on the dog’s toy duck. “Wack, wack” said the duck. “Hurry up. It sounds like she’s doing it again” said Dona. I rounded the end of the bed, grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on Dona’s vanity and turned the table lamp on to improve my chances of finding the hairball with my eyes and not my feet. “It sounded like it was just outside our door” said Dona helpfully. I picked my way carefully across our bedroom’s oriental rug, whose intricate pattern could conceal large quantities of any number of heinous substances. “I’m sure it was in the living room, please hurry” said my Sherpa guide from the sanctuary of our barf-free bed. “Aaiyeeeeaaah” said I as my leading foot hit wet cat puke camouflaged in the rug and I skated out the door and into the living room. “Ssploooosh” said Dona as she went into hysterics as her alter-ego Giggles the Clown. She was still laughing when I came back to bed fifteen minutes later, after cleaning the rug balanced on my right foot and left hand, scraping my foot off over the toilet, repeatedly rinsing my toes in the tub to get the last of the masticated Meow Mix out from between them, then finding Athena to hold her dangling in front of my face with my hands under her armpits as I told her in no uncertain terms that this would be the last such incident of this nature. “I’m happy you’re happy” I said sourly as I climbed into bed. Dona didn’t respond since this observation sent her into a new giggle fit. “Just great. My cat tried to assassinate me, my wife is a drooling idiot and it feels like I still have wet Friskies between my toes.” This launched her into spasms that made the bed shake like we were in a sleazy motel and I’d just dropped a handful of quarters into the headboard. After a few minutes, the magic fingers began to subside. A minute later she said “I’m sorry, sweetheart, it’s just the noise you made and the sight of you skating through the doorway ….” The memory was apparently as good as the original. The bed resumed shaking. A few minutes later, she tried again. “I really am sorry, dear. I’m over it now.” “Eeyouell” I said as I experienced the distinct sensation of still having feline upchuck between my lower digits. “What was that for?” she asked. I told her. The bed resumed shaking. Every time she got Giggles the Clown off the stage, she either described the event in the course of apologizing or I made the noise that accompanies puke toes déjà vu, and Giggles came out and took another bow. Sinatra made fewer come back tours. About one o’clock, my pillow and I stormed off to sleep on the couch. I wasn’t really mad, but the bed’s constant shaking was making me seasick. And I really didn’t think Athena would return the favor and clean up after me, although I’d have gladly settled for finding the little fur ball and making sure I got some of mine between her toes. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, don’t go” Dona said as I was passing the end of the bed. “Ssploooosh” she said as I carefully sidestepped the scene of the crime. I will always be proud of the super-human self control I demonstrated by not throttling her with my pillow. I don’t think any jury with one husband on it would have convicted me.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:22:55 +0000
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