Today the RFA, ready for anything team, shoveled the church out from under the snowpocalypse. Initially I thought we had prevented just such a snow storm by purchasing a very cool, very expensive snow blower. This was not the case. The snow and freezing rain came down for almost 3 days leaving us with upwards of 6 inches of snow locked down under ice.
The call went out and I geared up in my usual cold weather gear: Gloves, Gore-Tex jacket and Columbia boots. I have the most amazing boots. Well, had the most amazing boots. They finally bit the big one after 11 years faithful years.
I remember the day I bought them. I was with my friend Adam and his wife Leslie and we were checking out the new Dicks Sporting Goods store and it became increasingly clear I needed new boots for the elk hunting trip that was coming up. As luck would have it there was a big sale! I slapped down the plastic and walked out the owner of some serious cold weather Columbia boots.
While I was at the mall I thought it would be nice to swing by and see my wife, who was working a seasonal, second job, at the time. It’s not like we had fallen on bad times, or were even in a bind, but somehow money just seemed to slip from our fingers. As I walked into the store where she worked I was still blissfully unaware of the many mistakes I had made.
Let me recap them:
- We weren’t spending money on non essentials. This is much easier when you have a cash based budget. Or any budget at all. At the time, and even now, we may disagree on the “essential nature” of hunting, but the simple fact was we had not talked about it.
- It was her birthday week! I bought boots and what did I get her for her birthday? Nothing. Not even a card.
We had a disagreement of sorts. In the mall. I did my level best to talk my way out of it, which meant I was resolute in my defense of a bad decision. You know those moments where you are able to make people think they are wrong even when they are right? This was not one of those times. I came away from the fiasco with some great boots, and a much better understanding of marriage, namely always buy a birthday present. Especially if you plan on buying boots.
I began to joke that my books were the “almost marriage ending boots”. In all actuality it was the beginning of learning to love my wife more than I loved myself.
In the modernization of Charles Dicken’s classic, Great Expectations, Finn says, “I’m not going to tell the story the way it happened. I’m going to tell it the way I remember it.” In the interest of telling both sides perhaps My wife should write a guest post…Who knows?
I was eloquent! 