Hunky Magoo is a fitting nickname for the husband. It's unusual and so is he. I call him "H.M." He likes to think it stands for "His Majesty." H.M. sometimes gives the impression of being unfriendly, but deep down in his heart, he's really anti-social.

Like all men, he has his little idiosyncracies. For one thing, he's a pack rat. I haven't been able to park my van in our three car garage for ten years because it's overflowing with all the junk he's collected. He hangs onto everything he's ever owned, including the wing tip shoes he bought for our wedding thirty years ago. I can't sneak them out of the house, because he routinely checks the garbage to see if I've thrown away any of his stuff. He thinks the groovy polyester pants he wore in the seventies still have a few good years in them. I've even caught him wearing my cleaning rags.

Hunky's the most handsome, thoughtful, charming husband in the universe -- in his opinion. He brags that he can do the work of three men, and it's true, if the three men are Larry, Moe, and Curly. He also brags about having a mind like a steel trap. I tell him he's right about that, because nothing can penetrate it. I also tell him the trap must be stuck, because he keeps forgetting who's the boss around here.

H.M.'s perspective is very different from mine. For instance, he doesn't feel as strongly as I do about things like empty toilet paper rolls. Then there's the issue of dirty underwear. He seems to believe they belong on the bathroom floor. Every morning, I pick them up, along with enough back hair to fill a trash bag. (I'm saving it to weave a rug).

He also has some odd ideas about home decorating. Once, we were to show our house to prospective buyers on a day I had to work. That left H.M. in charge of giving the tour. That morning, I ran through the house giving it a quick inspection. Everything looked good. I grabbed the dirty laundry from the bedroom, ran downstairs, and dropped it into the washer before going out the door.

When I came home that night, the couple was just leaving. I met them on the front porch, thanked them for coming, and went inside to ask the husband how the showing went.

As I stepped through the door, I saw THEM! There, on the stairs leading up to our bedroom -- on the third step to be exact -- was a pair of my holey, white, cotton, "grandma" underwear.

At that moment, I can't be sure, but I think I had a stroke. I could almost hear those ragged old bloomers screaming, "Look at me! Look at me!" They mocked me, saying, " Nya, Nya! I've been here all day, right out in the open for all the world to see, and there wasn't a darn thing you could do about it!"

I was mortified. It was the second most embarrassing event of my life. The first most embarrassing was in second grade when my mother gave me a haircut and a poodle perm the day before class pictures were taken. That horrific memory of those tight, one-quarter-inch, fuzzy curls and the huge red bow on top of my head, was captured on film to be ridiculed forever by future generations.

Anyway, after my stroke, I got up off the floor, turned to the husband, and groaned, "Please tell me these were not here when the couple walked through the house."

"Yeah, they were," he answered, with the same casual tone he would use to say, "Nice weather we're having, ha?"

I felt a second stroke coming on. An inferno of anger was rising from the pit of my stomach and felt as if it would shoot out my ears. Yet, I made a valiant attempt to control myself. I spoke as calmly as I could. "Tell me," I said quietly. Then, a little louder, I asked, "Why would you leave them there?" Finally, I yelled, "Why didn't you pick them up?"

Looking at me as if I were Quasimodo's ugly cousin from Neptune, he sighed and said, "I didn't want to call attention to them, that's why!"

Spouses are like habits. Sometimes you really want to kick them.

©2006

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