Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Linda

Linda

I have to tell you about my wife Linda. She is not a full blown obsessive compulsive but she runs back in the pack.

The other day in the supermarket I watched her trying to decide what jar of pickles to buy. We like the stackers and she must have gone through forty (jars) looking for one that didn’t have any rinds in it. As I watched her totally absorbed in this unnecessary task I realized how much I really like her….sort of got blurry eyed.

Last night however, I was not in the same frame of mind. She was watching the DVD of “The Kings Speech “in bed on her little red DVD player. Now I realize that if that is is what she enjoys doing I ought to shut up and let her have at it, but I was not feeling good and was in a bad mood. Anyway when the movie ended I saw out of the corner of my eye the screen scrolling with all the names of everybody on the planet involved in the production.

Now most normal people don’t read that stuff but my wife is in a different category….For fifteen (15) minutes she sat reading every name, like she thought she might know someone on the list. Finally I told her to quit compulsing and turn out the light. I hurt her feelings and she was still ticked off this morning.

When Linda and I found each other she was a huge project to turn into an Army Wife. I swear she and her sister were hidden under a mushroom their whole lives. That had to end fast and it was an agony for her.
Plus she had to live with me. The job description for an Army Wife runs at least thirty-six typewritten pages and involved moving every two years, managing the checkbook, dealing with separations (In my case that was not an extreme hardship) and holding the family together.

There were none of these tasks that she ever clutched on except she failed the sign test in Germany when she went to get her drivers license. This was the girl who never studied in her life and always got straight “A’s” She was absolutely mortified never having failed at anything of an academic nature… Did I chortle about that….her dyslectic husband who was on a first name basis with failure.

My older daughter is just like her…she has the same powerful mind but is not quite so compulsive….years of training under my tutelage had her well prepared for life….When she got frustrated she liked to pick a fight with me…At first I didn’t understand but gradually caught on, that all that emotion had to find a vent and I could tell when I sat down at the supper table how the dinner was going to go. My younger daughter has the same violence inside her but has to simply explode once or twice a year….Personally I preferred fighting with my older daughter than having to pick up the pieces while my younger trembled and shook.

I see myself in both those girls and no doubt it simmers in my five (5) grandsons.

I apologized this morning and blamed everything on my fever....Am I a fraud or what?