My wife and I try as often as possible to engage in snappy repartee, often peppering each other with questions like these:
Are we better off with stocks or bonds?
Should we take social security now, or wait?
Do we care if this bread is gluten-free?
Actually, those are the kinds of questions my wife might ask me. Here are the most common questions I ask Mary Ellen:
Do you know where my coat is?
Did you hang up my coat up last night?
Was I wearing a coat last night?
Nippy temps are around the corner, but this year I plan to face the winter chill without any substantial outerwear whenever possible. It’s not that I’m particularly hardy; I’m simply looking at things realistically. I’m simply tired of looking for my coat.
I’m going to explain my problem, but you have to read this carefully, or you’ll be lost—like my coat usually is. I never liked wearing winter coats, especially in the car. I don’t want to be all bundled up and feel like the Pillsbury Dough Boy at the wheel. I get too warm when the car heats up, but I can’t undo my buttons or unzip because of the seat belts. Then when I exit the car, I’m soon in a warm place like a movie theater or Lucas Oil Stadium and have to immediately take off my heavy jacket and stuff it under my seat, which is a great way to add mustard stains and sticky pieces of popcorn to my apparel.
Since I seldom wear a coat, I am accustomed to leaving places without any wintry apparel on me. And so, when I occasionally do take along a jacket, I often leave it behind because I’m not used to wearing it in the first place. Are you following me? If you are following me, please tap me on the shoulder and remind me that I just left my coat at Einstein Bagels.
I think it’s even crazier for my wife to wear a coat. In the winter, she asks me to warm up the car before we leave the house. Then she asks me to drop her off in front of the restaurant. Then she asks me to pick her up at door. We drive home in a heated car and get out in our heated garage. Why does she need a coat? By the way, this doesn’t apply when Mary Ellen walks the dog or goes out to shovel snow. The reason it doesn’t apply is that she doesn’t do those two things.
For many years, this was a typical phone conversation on any given morning:
“Hello, I was at your restaurant last night and I may have left my brown winter coat there. Could you please check to see if you have it?
“Let me see. We have a pair of reading glasses, an iPhone, and two credit cards. Yes, here’s a brown coat. Didn’t you realize you forgot it, once you got outside and it was bitter cold?”
“Have you been talking to my wife? I’ll get the coat tomorrow. I would come by now, but it’s raining.”
“Don’t you have an umbrella? It’s been pouring non-stop all week?”
“I left it at the Lucas Oil Stadium yesterday.”
