The Choices We Make

              Janie can be a pain in the ass.  First she didn’t want to go hiking. “I got cramps, Harold!”  She also can have a real whiney voice that sounded just like a Honda motorcycle horn.  I threw out a lot of please, please, pleeeeezes, and she finally said, “Oh, fine! Okaaaaay!”  Beep, beep, beeeeeeep, and went in to change a second time from work.

         I thought I had thought of everything.  Janie and her cramps proved me wrong.  We drove to our favorite hiking trail, Janie not responding much to whatever tidbits of silence-filling conversation I was offering. 

         I was leading the way along the path for about five steps when Janie said she didn’t feel like looking at my big butt the whole way and scooted ahead of me. 

                “Like I want to be staring at yours?” I wanted to say, but this was not the time.

         I took a calming breath.  I said: “You know, Jamie, we’ve been together a long time, now.”

         “Sure feels like it.”

         “And living together for almost two years…

         “Boy, how time flies,” she deadpanned.  Beep, dabeep, beep.

         I took another calming breath or two.

         “I just think, we’ve done pretty good together.”

         There was no reply.  We walked without talking for about a hundred yards and I could see the fork in the path up ahead.  Take the right hand fork and we'd go up to a little spot overlooking the ocean.  I had put a loveseat and some candles, and an ice bucket with Champagne out on a clearing I had made that very day.

         “Take the right!”

         “No.”

         “Go right!”

         “No,” Janie said. Then, just before the fork, she called back over her shoulder, “You’re hyperventilating, Harold! Are you that fat?”

         “Fine, bye-bye!”

         Beep-beep!

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