Hot Dogs for Dinner

We were fighting over hot dogs, as hard as that is to believe.

“I don’t want Pepper and Parsley Pork,” he told me; sighing as though he had just run a mile in his socks. I laughed. His butt hadn’t left that recliner in six years, other than to go to work or to Russ’s, his best buddy since high school.

“It’s not called ‘Pepper and Parsley’,” I shot back, hiding my smirk. “It’s Pepper and Parmesan. Pepper as in black, not jalapeno.”

“I don’t care if the Pepper is feeyooshaw,” he said, laughing. I could tell he felt a certain pride in knowing more colors than red, black, and green.

“What is the big deal with you and hot dogs, anyway?” I said, covering my mouth to hold in a chuckle. The picture of my husband running around a track in tight shorts, tank top, and a sweat band - a 'feeyooshaw' sweat band no less- would not leave my mind.

“I just like ‘em. Does that offend you somehow?” he asked.

“No, but if you must have ‘em, I have a pack of Decker ones in here somewhere,” I said with a sigh as I walked towards the refrigerator.

I felt this absurd disappointment with not being able to fix the recipe I had clipped from Wednesday’s paper and right then should have known that my night was a lost cause.

“I don’t like those ones," I heard him groan. "There ain’t nothin but thoats and anuses inside those,” he informed me, turning my stomach as he did. It's entirely unfunny how every time he says that phrase, he never puts the 'r' in 'throats'.

“That’s disgusting, Junior,” I said.

Hearing his name jump off my tongue, I wondered what happened to the promise I made myself to never marry a man named 'Junior'.

“They are,” he continued. “I won’t eat them, and you better not be feedin those to my children when I’m not here. Don’t want my kids bein fed thoats and anuses like a horse.”

I felt like writing 'THROATS' across his face with a permanent black marker.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll run to the Albertson’s.”

I waited a few seconds.

“Thanks for volunteering to go for me.” I added. It was only going to be my ten thousandth trip there in the last year. An image of the cashiers tossing confetti on me while the cameras recorded an 'Albertson’s Most Frequent Shopper' commercial flashed in my mind.

“All Beef, Nuri. Remember ALL BEEF.” He spoke to me like I was a waitress. I wondered where all my tip money was, before realizing it had been spent on fishing rods and golf clubs.

“Be right back,” I told him, grabbing my purse and keys. “Kids are playing Playstation, don’t let em fight over it.”

He waved, or I thought he did.

Turns out, he was just reaching for the remote.

***

There was no confetti waiting for me at the store. In fact, no one even said hello to me. Once again I felt an absurd disappointment.

I don’t know about the rest of America, but I’ve lost count of how many times I have wished that I could upsize my life with the ease that I upsize my burger meals.

I would upsize to respected career woman who manages her job, her kids, and the PTA all while looking like she just walked out of a Merle Norman.

I’d also take the house with spotless floors and crayon-free walls.

All for only forty-nine cents extra.

The one thing I wouldn’t upsize is my figure. I remember the feeling of slipping into a size six like I remember being born: I know it happened at one point but I can’t recall any good details about it.

Walking by the chips –why do they always put things like chips and Little Debbie cakes in the aisle that’s right on the way to just about everything you go to get at the store? – I stopped at the sign that read 'Two for $3', in big red letters. The bag of Tom’s Hot Fries just below the sign spoke to me more than the sign did, calling to me like cool stream on a humid day. I felt my face plunging into the bag and my mouth being filled with all the flaming goodness of a food that I never used to let guys see me eat, and it felt like sex. Not just sex, but sex at seventeen when everything was new and each touch melted my skin.

Being sucked back into reality by the sudden vision of my backside expanding to the size of a minivan, I realized that I had already placed three bags of Hot Fries in my cart. I put them back on the shelf, feeling my little piece of heaven slip through my fingers as I did.

I had worked hard to keep my butt size below critical mass. The task made me feel like a pilot landing a plane; how no one notices your efforts unless you mess things up. Junior never compliments me.

Sometimes, he tries.

“I notice that you cleaned that mess around the toilet. You still smell pretty though," he told me yesterday. "I’m surprised. That was some pretty nasty shit down there, almost made me puke,” he added.

Those anything-but-romantic words composed the closest thing to a compliment I have received in the last eight months.

I remember the smirk he had after he'd told me that, as though he'd just given me a lifetime reprieve from giving blowjobs; like I should throw my arms around his neck and tell him, 'Oh babe! You are the greatest!'

It wasn’t my arms that I felt like placing around his neck, that’s for sure.

Strolling through the frozen food aisle, I noticed a young mother –about twenty-two from what I could tell- walking by, speaking baby-talk to her son sitting in the child seat of her cart. Watching her –in her tight bell-bottom jeans, her pressed shirt, and her hair did just so- was like looking into a mirror that reflected the image of me from fifteen years ago.

I wanted to jump into her skin.

I wondered if I would still choose Junior as the man to spend my life with.

Then I remembered how romantic he once had been.

“I look in your eyes Nuri, and I see where I want to be for the rest of my life. I see all the good in the world buried behind them, how you are the best thing that could ever happen to anyone, and I feel lucky that you happened to me. I love you, Nuri,” he had told me on the night I agreed to become his wife.

“Forever,” he said.

He looked so good, in his starched Wranglers and his button down shirt, like he just walked off the stage at the Grand Ole Opry. Having this thing for cowboys back then – now that I think about it, what girl didn’t have a thing for good looking cowboys at some point in their lives – I fell hard, like a bale of hay off the back of the truck where we first met. Our church was sponsoring a ride through town on a truck filled with hay to promote our Bible School, and he saw me sitting there, looking like a skinny Ellie Mae Clampett with my pigtails. I remember scolding myself for putting those in when I first saw him looking at me. Feeling convinced that he thought I looked stupid, I didn’t even smile at him.

However, as with a lot of things in life I guess, the difference between what you think and reality is as vast as the regret you feel when realize you never made it to Paris like you promised yourself.

As my mind journeyed back into the present, I waved hello to the girl as she passed me by. She smiled and waved back, then opened the door to get a box of Hot Pockets.

I wondered, how did Junior transform from the dapper cowboy I fell in love with to the man who sits in my living room every night with a remote control welded into his right hand? I laughed when I thought about it. I thought of all the times he lost the remote in the couch, and then blamed me for it.

“Nuri, you steal my remote? I know you took it,” he’d tell me, looking no further than the two foot radius surrounding him.

I told him once, “You know, if you just look a little bit further than an arms length around yourself, you’d find a lot more things around here.”

And they say women are without logic.

Continuing on through frozen foods –feeling this odd excitement when I noticed that Lean Cuisine had a new Italian dinner- I arrived at the aisle where they keep the hot dogs.

I couldn’t help myself, I had to look. Picking up a package of the least expensive wieners there, I turned it over and read the ingredients. I was looking for 'thoats and anuses' printed in bold black letters.

The closest thing I saw to it was an ingredient known as 'mechanically separated chicken'.

“What in the hell?” I whispered, shaking my head.

Determining that there weren’t any anuses or throats in the package, I disagreed with my husband. Midly however. I was forced to concede that I also did not want our kids eating that nasty shit.

Ever.

Throwing a package of ALL BEEF Ball Parks into my cart, I started towards the register.

'I told you Nuri,' Junior's voice echoed in my head. 'I told you I read it somewhere. Thoats and anuses. That’s all they're made of.'

I began laughing as the lady with the homemade sweater raced by me, giving me one of those looks, like she thinks I have communicable idiocy.

I laughed some more.

Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks. I thought, 'here I am with my hair looking like I slept in a wind tunnel; my butt looking flatter than the glass in a picture frame (wearing my gun metal gray sweat pants, of course); and my boobs hanging bra-free in my 'Chics Dig Scars' t-shirt that Junior had given me for my birthday last year.'

What a sight I must have been.

Once again, I starting laughing. Hysterically. I just might have laughed the whole way to the cash register.

The last thing I remember before I left the store was the cashier.

He told me: “Have a good night, Mrs. Kirkus.”

'Wow', I thought. 'He remembered my name after all.'

The name I had once been so proud to say to my single friends, like it was a title of Duchess or Dame.

Hearing it then made me laugh the rest of the way home.