The F Word

Photo taken March 2007

Mark's shopping habits are inexplicable to me. Today we went out with the express wish that I would buy myself some new shorts. After all, the weather is now warming up from the low eighties up into the mid eighties and I need some warm weather clothes. I knew exactly what I wanted. I didn't want pleated front shorts, I didn't want old man at the beach shorts, and I didn't want Midwestern tourist playing golf shorts. I wanted a pair of cargo shorts. I like them because they have a pocket for my wallet, a pocket for my phone, one for my money, and another for my keys. I like to have the weight evenly distributed in my pants. So off we went to T.J. Maxx, Marshall's, and Ross. None of them had what I was looking for. In desperation, I started walking over to Old Navy where I found a nice pair of cargo shorts. Mark had a fit. "I can't believe you're going to pay full price for a pair of crappy shorts that will fall apart in two weeks." he whined as I paid thirty four dollars for exactly what I wanted. You see in Mark's world you never, ever pay full price for anything. Mark only buys things that are on sale even if he doesn't need them. Such was the case about ten years ago when I came home from work and found a strange contraption sitting on the  dining room table. "What the hell is that thing?" I asked Mark. "It's a fondue pot. It was on sale, sixty percent off." he said proudly. I had never had fondue, I didn't even know exactly what fondue was, but now we had a fondue pot. "Oh, you'll like it. We'll have some fondue this week or next week. We can have fondue any time we want now."

            Like I said, that was ten years ago. Instead of making fondue that week, Mark placed that fondue pot up on top of the China cabinet where it sat unmolested until yesterday. Yesterday Mark pulled that thing down from the China cabinet and made fondue for the first time. When Mark called me in for dinner the fondue pot was sitting in the middle of the table, a small flame burning under it, with some kind of melted cheese bubbling away inside it. Yesterday I learned something. I hate fondue. It sucked. Not only did it not taste very good, I had to work at it. I had to stab at the pieces of meat, bread, fruit, and whatever, then stick them down into the bubbling brew. Most of the time they fell off the little fork and I had to fish them out. But damn, Mark finally got his money's worth out of that weird pot he bought for sixty percent off, ten years ago. One other thing about that fondue Mark made, it gave me some really bad gas.

Photo taken March 2014