Wife
The Stove
OK…here's the story. I turn on the front burner. My wife says, "Don't use that burner. It only goes directly to hot." So I turn it off and turn on the back burner. Then she says, "Don't use that burner either. It doesn't work. It must have something to do with you not seating the 2-burner module properly when you removed it yesterday to clean under it." So I turn off that burner.
I pull out the 2-burner module and flip over the module to check the bottom. Why? That is a question I have asked myself several times since the event, considering there's nothing on the bottom of the module. Now this is where the story gets interesting.
The full weight of the module, burner side down, came to rest on the inside of my tender, yet supple, upper arm. Problem was (remember what my wife said about the front burner?) the burner was still extremely hot. I didn't think it had time to heat up since I turned it off so quickly. Apparently, I was wrong.
The front burner seared into my flesh like a hot branding iron leaving 7 distinct impressions of the coils of the burner. The first thought that came into my mind was, "Golly Gee. That's awfully hot!"
I screamed like a little girl and dropped the module onto the stove and ran to the sink to put cold water onto the burns. My wife, hearing my cries, came running from the living room. "What happened?" her concerned voice asked.
"I burned myself on the stove!" as I sniffled and showed her my blistering 2nd degree burn wounds. Her mouth fell open in amazement and, as any caring woman of heart-felt sensitivity would convey in an emergency situation, said "Boy, that was a stupid thing to do!" "Why would you do that?"
I thought to myself, "Why didn't I think to ask myself that question?"
I went to the doctor this morning. "Why are you here?" he asked.
"I burned myself," hoping for some needed sympathy as I pulled up my sleeve and revealed the extensive damage. Instead of sympathy, he chuckled and paused for just a moment, as if he had just received an epiphany, "say that looks like the coils of a stove burner!" "Is that a 'GE' logo in the middle of the burns?"
"Ha-ha…don't give up on your day job, Doc."
Needless to say, with the potential of long-term scarring, I'm thinking people might see the scars on my arms and confuse me with being a gangbanger. What sup, dog?!
The Eclipse
My wife gets up very early in the morning for work (around 4:45am) when it is still quite dark. One morning, she stirs me from slumber and gets me out of bed to see the lunar eclipse. In what would be mistaken as a drunken stupor, I stumble with half-glazed eyes to the bedroom window.
"There it is!" she exclaims in a high-pitched voice of excitement. She is trying to have me look out into space. Heck, I can't even make out the clock face 5" away without my contacts in.
"Isn't it magical!" she coos. "Breath-taking," I respond.
"W-A-Y-Y-N-N-E!!! You're not even looking in the right direction! It over there!"
I look out the window and see but a sliver of lighted fuzz. With 20/400+ vision, there's not much to see. "Wow!" I say. "You can hardly see the moon." (in my case, that was true).
"That's not the moon, that's the streetlight!" she says. "It's over there!" as she points in the opposite direction.
I decided to be honest. "I can't see a thing without my contacts on."
"Well get them on and hurry!" she responds.
Have you ever tried putting contacts in sleepy eyes that are nearly 'glued' shut. Not a pretty site. "Hurry!" she commands.
Finally, I manage to get those crater-size discs into my eyes, to which I squint and react negatively. "Owwww!" I cry out. My eyes well up with tears. "Hurry!" she reiterates.
Finally, in pain and only half-blind by now, stumbling over every obstacle in the darkened room, I manage to make it to the window.
"Ahhhhhhhhh," she laments. "Clouds have completely covered the moon."
She continues as she walks out of the room, "Oh well, maybe you can catch the next lunar eclipse in 2014."
The door closes behind her as she whisks away down the hall. I'm left standing, in the dark, tears dripping from blood-shot eyes, dressed modestly in my robe….all alone….
"Magical," I mutter as I climb back into the bed. "Just magical."