I am sitting on a conference bridge now, trying to figure out what one of the presenters is saying. He speaks so incredibly fast that I don’t understand him a LOT. I know this is my problem, because he has a really strong accent, but he obviously speaks English a heck of a lot better than I speak, well, any other language besides English. I could swear he just said something about “managery Russians” and I don’t know where that could come into our topic.
Tim says I do this all the time, even to him. I will miss-hear something, and look at him and say, “Did you just say ‘managery Russians’? Because I don’t know what that means…”
Then he laughs at me.
This happens when he writes notes to me as well. Infamous story in our early marriage: Tim added something to the shopping list, and like most of his handwriting, it was a scribble. We had been spending a LOT of time working on our old house, and I just figured he wanted to use the “cheap clothes pins” to hold up something, or keep it in place while it dried, or whatever. So, I shrugged and bought a bag of cheap clothes pins.
I get home, and he asks me why I bought a bag of clothes pins.
“They were on the list! See, right here.”
Yeah, that would have been “cheap cloth napkins.”
I’ve never lived it down. Any time I either miss-hear him, or I can’t read what he writes, he says “cheap clothes pins.” If one of us is feeling particularly grumpy that we have to go to the store, the other will covertly add “cheap clothes pins” to the list.
We still have the bag of cheap clothes pins. We’ve used a couple.
I think they’ve saved our marriage. You have to be able to laugh, especially when you deal with county people, and paperwork that you swear you’ve filled out before, or strange family, or whatever. You have to know the code words to get yourself and your partner to laugh.
Cheap clothes pins. Get yourself a bag.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow
that’s a great story 
. My boyfriend doesn’t write our grocery list, but he proofreads mine… I think our funniest story right now is why we have an overabundance of tiny trash cans in our apartment 
Hey Deva – thanks for stopping by! And why DO you have an overabundance of tiny trash cans?
With us, it isn’t clothes pins, it’s nail clippers. For a while, Rick and I were alternating nights in each other’s abodes. All of a sudden, he was always asking to use my nail clippers. Then, when we moved in together (he moved into my place) we were cleaning out his apartment, and found a pair of nail clippers in the bathroom.
“Oh, that’s where they were,” he said. “You didn’t take them after all.” It seems that when they first went missing, he assumed that I had taken them, but he didn’t want to say anything. I often tease him now that the only reason he stayed with me was so he could try to get his nail clippers back.
The spousal unit once came home with a 2-liter bottle of Coke. I figured maybe he wanted rum and coke? Or something, because we don’t drink soda ever ever ever. He, on the other hand, had figured *I* wanted it for rum and coke, because hey, it was on the shopping list, who was he to question it?
Later that day, I asked ‘Where’s my cucumber, dear?’ He still makes fun of me for it (and reads through my grocery lists aloud, before he leaves)!
@D’Julie – Sharing nail clippers is when you know it’s serious. I hope you practiced safe nail-clipper-sharing.
After eons of bachelorhood, the first thing I noticed was that I stopped being able to find anything in our first apartment. At first I thought I was crazy for swearing something was where I thought it would be. Later it would prove that, um, someone moved them.
I must say that “you only love me for my nail clippers” would be a good one to use sometime.
@Jenny – funniest thing I’ve read in days. Mary and I have a running “ultimate shopping list for freaking out a store cashier”. A cucumber is definitely on that list.
True life story – buying glycerin suppositories for my constipated toddler and then picking up a Snickers bar on a whim at the register did earn me a weird look from the cashier.