The Seventh Anniversary

The Anniversary Present

Well, here it is, Feb. 7, 2007 and our Seventh Wedding Anniversary will be coming up in only six days, and I still haven’t figured out what to get my wife.

Bill, who works next to me where we sort plastic from glass in the trash the guys collect every day, said the “traditional gifts” for the year are wood and wool. I’m supposed to buy her some wool undies or a wooden handle broom?

Bill went on to say there is the new, “modern” gift of bronze, but, geeze, bronze pots are soooo expensive and, with all of our expenses we have Carol doesn’t have enough money to buy me gas to get to work. I mean, the posted price at the station when I came home was $2.08 a gal for reg. Good thing I have a old 81 Ford Ranger that uses regular.

I counted my money at work, Bill had to help me, and decided I could spend only $6.99 for a present. Anything else and we wouldn’t have enough to get the oldest kid, Cathy, that new X-Box she has to have. (Carol said they need it for school...isn’t technology wonderful?)

I still don’t even have no cell phone and there’s no way we can buy a computer, we don’t have the money. I know Carol has to go down to the library every night except Thursdays for two or three hours to get on line to check her mail. I dunno why the postman delivers it to her at the library and not at home.

Besides she never brings any mail home. Then, when she gets home, she’s really tired and goes to bed about 9 pm, sometimes even at 7. Thursdays she gets her hair done at 4:30, before I get home, but she doesn’t get home until about 8 pm. She dresses up real nice for her hair dresser. She puts on heels and a really cute dress and top. I told her the dress was kinda short and the top showed too much of her boobs but she said they were HER boobs and she could dress like she wanted to and show as much as she felt like.

I didn’t know that mail was delivered on Sundays but every other Sunday she goes to the library to check her mail. That takes her longer for some reason, sometimes she’s there all day. I just don’t know what she does there all that time.

I asked her the other day and she got all uppity on me. “What do you mean? I go to get my mail. I TOLD you that, don’t you believe me? You think I’m meeting some guy there,” she screamed at me.

“No, No, dear,” I said, “I believe you honey. I trust you. I just wondered why you never bring any mail home.”

“Because it’s DIGITAL!” she snapped back; “You know what that is, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. Actually I didn’t know what she meant by ‘digital’. I mean, I know that ‘digits’ are numbers or fingers; I’m not that stupid but that didn’t make no sense. I didn’t wanna push it though. If I did she’d start calling me a “dummy” like she always does when I don’t understand what she's talkin' about.

“Look, dummy,” she said, “If I want to go read my mail every day of the week I will; just be shush.”

The other day the phone rang, I think it was Wednesday. When I picked it up, before I could say “hello” a man’s voice said, “Hon, I can’t make it tomorrow afternoon, we’ll have to meet next week, same place, same time. Bye, luv ya,” and the dial tone came on.

I figured it was a wrong number and didn’t think much of it.

Thursday, when I got home at 5:15 Carol was already home from the hair dressers and was pissy as hell.

“Didn’t you get your hair done today, hon?” I asked.

“NO!” she fired back, “Damn hair dresser was off sick so I came right back home.”

“Why didn’t you have another girl do your hair?”

“Because I didn’t want ANOTHER one to do me, er, I mean do it, you big dummy.”

She ranted on and on like that for about seven minutes before quieting down and going to bed.

Saturday I slipped out of the house and bought her a brass vase. It cost me more than I wanted to spend, $17, but I figured she deserved it, missing her hair appointment and all. I tied a pretty red ribbon around it and hid it in the garage, figuring I give it to her when she got back home from her library trip Sunday, which was our anniversary.

Well, Sunday came and she got all gussied up like she was going to the hair dressers, not the library, I mean she looked good enough to eat. Anyways, she left a little earlier than usual. I puttered around the yard. Lunch came and went, so did dinner, but she didn’t come home.

Finally, about dark, I went inside to take a shower and noticed a piece of paper on the bed. I picked it up and looked at it, “Dummy,” Carol had writ, “I hope you can read good enough to read this. I’m leaving you. My boyfriend and I are a long ways from you now. You are just too stupid to understand anything that is happening. Good Bye, your ex-wife Carol.”

I wasn’t surprised actually. But Carol was wrong, she wasn’t my ex-wife, she was my seventh ex.



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