Marital Interlude: A Conversation/Battle With My Wife.

I deal with marital strife at work all the time. Arguably, couples fight more on vacation than when they’re at home, and so I often take it upon myself to intercede.

What makes me think I’m qualified to do so? Looking at my own home life, I have no idea…

To begin, I love my wife. After twenty-plus years of marriage, she’s one of the few people alive who “gets” me.

To clarify, she doesn’t understand me (at all), but she gets me.

Whether she likes it or not.

MY WIFE, KNOWN TO MY LONGTIME READERS – ALL FIVE OF YOU – AS “VAMPIRELOVER”: (Walking into the living room.) Hey, Skippy! (She then proceeded to flick my ear -hard.)

Yes, she calls me “Skippy”. And she sometimes beats me – in a loving way, I’m guessing.

ME:  You’re a real pill, honey.

VL:  A “pill”?  Listen, Sugar Pumpling… what are you, seventy?

ME:   Yeah, seventy like a fox!  And by the way… “Sugar Pumpling”?

VL:  I started to say “Sugar Plum” and then I was gong to go with “Sugar Dumpling” and it all got mixed up… shut up!

ME:  Well, that clears it up then…

Rather than waiting for her rage-filled answer to that little zinger, I struck like a pasty-white ninja, and retaliated by grabbing one of our dog’s beloved toys/love partner, a giant stuffed dog that has seen much better days. My attack was successful: our dog’s “baby” struck my wife right in the ole kisser. Fortunately, it had been softened after hours of licking – and doggie love – a fact that was not lost on my beloved bride.

VL:  ARGH!!! I’LL KILL YOU, SKIPPY!  DO YOU KNOW WHAT CHELSEA HAS DONE TO THAT THING?  I… I’LL… I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M GONG TO DO… BUT YOU’RE DEAD!

ME:  Now hang on, sweetie –

VL:  (Lowering her voice an octave.) You hang on, you’re dead!

As many a husband can attest, my attempt to infuse logic into a marital battle was doomed form the start.

But being a husband and a poor dumb bastard, I kept going anyway.

ME:  Hear me out… you struck first, so that was a “tit”. I struck back, so that was a “tat”. If you keep going that will be another “tit”…

VL:  So?

ME:  So then you’ll have two tits.

As you can imagine, my humor fell as flat as Jennifer Lawrence walking a red carpet at an awards show. My vampire-loving-wife continued to seethe with rage and I paid a high price later on in the form of a mega-extreme purple nurple that left me ruing the day I emerged screaming from my mother’s womb.

(For the uninitiated: a purple nurple is the act of grabbing and twisting a nipple of another person, one’s self, and even occasionally other mammals, though I don’t recommend attempting a cross-species purple nurple.)

Ain’t modern love grand?

See you in the lobby, kids…

If I was a mutant – I’d still lose every battle…