It started out as a favor to my wife. It ended with me frothing at the mouth on the carpet in our bedroom. And not in a good way, either.
At the time of these events, my lovely and talented wife, Kristin, was pregnant. Had been for about six weeks. So, naturally, all the joys of pregnancy were being visited upon her – nausea, sleeplessness, the desire to carve off chunks of my anatomy that I’m quite fond of. As a result, I tried to pitch in and do as much as I could around the house to help. “Anything for you, dear!” was a common refrain in our house during her first trimester. “Just put away the butcher knife!”
And, if I do say so myself, I did a pretty good job of picking up the slack. She was been able to relax on the sofa or in the bed while I cleaned, and washed clothes, and got the boys dressed for school, and vacuumed, and whatnot. I could tell I was doing a good job, because she would often look at a project I’d just finished – say, cleaning the kitchen – and she’d sigh heavily, and shake her head. Obviously she was realizing I could do chores just as we as she could, and she felt unneeded. I tried to hug her at those times, to reassure her, but she usually had the butcher knife in her hand, so I couldn’t get too close.
Anyway, one evening around Christmastime I'd just finished replacing the battery in my car, and it only took me 45 minutes, so I was feeling pretty darn good about myself. Kristin was plopped on the floor of our bedroom, with a small pile of picture frames on one side and a considerably larger pile of frames on the other. She was rocking back and forth, weeping softly.
Instantly, my keen husband senses were on the alert. I figured something was wrong, but I’ve learned it’s better to be safe than sorry.
“Honey? Is something wrong?”
“It’s these stupid picture frames,” she said. “I HATE putting pictures in picture frames, and this is what I was going to give some people for Christmas, and I’m having a hard time doing this, and Christmas is only three weeks away, and I don’t know how I’ll finish in time, and …”
“Would you like me to do it?”
“Oh, WOULD you?” And with that, she was laying on the couch, watching bad reality television, while I stared at a stack of about 15 picture frames.
Now, I don’t like to brag, but as good as I am at stuff like cleaning the kitchen and replacing car batteries, I absolutely ROCK at putting pictures in picture frames. Seriously. If putting pictures in picture frames were an Olympic event, the U.S. would take the gold medal every year thanks to me. I’d get my picture on a box of Wheaties, with a picture frame in one hand and an 8 x 10 glossy in the other.
So I settled down to the job. It was going smoothly – I got almost all the pictures in their frames in about 20 minutes. I was setting all kinds of good-husband records. The Wheaties people called twice, but I ignored the phone. It’s that kind of high-level concentration that lets us top athletes excel in our chosen sport.
And then it happened. I noticed one of the picture frames had the price sticker stuck directly on the glass. Right smack-dab in the middle.
Stop and think about that a second. The ONE place you don’t want a price sticker on a picture frame is directly on the glass. I mean, there are dozens of other places the store could put the price sticker – on the outside of the frame, or on the back, or on the edges, or on the cardboard little foldy-outy thing in the back that’s supposed to make the picture stand up but that never lasts more than a day or two without collapsing, etc.
But noooo. This retailer decided they had to put that sticker RIGHT ON THE GLASS.
But even this was not a problem, because I’m a dual-sport athlete. In my spare time, when I’m not putting pictures into picture frames, I’m peeling price stickers off items. I’m usually so good at this that frequently our neighbors will come over to watch, marveling at how I can get the sticker off without tearing it or leaving any sticky residue on the surface.
Our neighbors don’t get out too much.
Anyway, I saw the sticker, and I start to peel it off. Unfortunately, this particular store either used a vastly inferior price sticker, or they had a maniacal clerk who believed in superglueing the stickers on their merchandise, or the sticker was exposed to gamma radiation and became The Incredible Hulk Sticker, or something ... because this thing just would not come off. Try as I might – and I tried mightily, let me assure you – I couldn’t get the sticker off without tearing it to shreds, and leaving those little white pieces of sticker-crap all over the glass front of the picture frame.
Okay, no problem – I was still in control of the situation. In true Manly fashion, I used my fingernails to scrape off the white sticker-shreds. After a while, I succeeded in getting off all the sticker … but the glue-stuff was smeared all over the glass.
And, frankly, I was at a loss. Spit didn’t seem to get this stuff off too well, no matter how hard I rubbed it. I tried Windex, but the glue-stuff just laughed at that. Nail-polish remover seemed to work slightly, but it also spread the sticky stuff around an awful lot. I thought maybe the stuff wouldn’t be too noticeable once the picture was in the frame, so I put the picture in to see. Unfortunately, the sticky-stuff was right over our youngest son's face in the picture. Even as a Man who doesn’t pay much attention to pictures, I knew that wouldn’t fly. (“John, why does our youngest child look like he has leprosy in this Christmas picture?”)
I tried moving the picture around a little bit within the frame, to get the smeary stuff off the boy's face, but the best I could do was reposition the smeary stuff over Santa’s face. Which wasn’t going to fly, either. (“Why on earth did you take the boys to get their pictures made with a Santa with leprosy?”)
So a job that I thought would take 20 or 30 minutes, tops, had now consumed my attention for more than an hour; just as I could see the finish line, it kept retreating from me. And as I was struggling with this glop on the glass, frustration growing by the second, I happened to notice that the last remaining picture frame, the only one left I had to do once I got this situation squared away, was also from the same retailer. With an identical price sticker. Stuck in the identical place on the glass.
And I lost it. I think I might have howled. I distinctly remember gibbering, but everything’s a blur after that. When I came to my senses, an unknown amount of time later, somehow the remaining pictures were in the picture frames, with nary a trace of sticker or sticker glop on the glass anywhere. It was a Christmas miracle!
I paid the price for that miracle, though. Somehow, during my conniption, one of the price stickers had adhered itself to a favorite part of my anatomy.
Kristin kept offering to get it off with the butcher knife.
(c) 2012 John Puckett
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