My wife informed me the other day that she was top heavy. “I have to be honest,” I told her, “but I never noticed this.”
“That’s because you are a man,” she said.
Mary Ellen came to this conclusion not by looking in the mirror, but by looking in the kitchen cabinets. “You wouldn’t have known about this problem,” continued Mary Ellen, “because men never look inside pantries.”
Things were getting weird, even for me.
Mary Ellen’s revelation about being top heavy came about when we decided to redo our kitchen. By the way, I think that “redo” is the wrong word. If you are redoing something, that means you did it once before. (A woman sometimes gets a hairdo, but it’s really a hair redo.) I have no memory of ever doing our kitchen. We moved in 20 years ago … and there it was. We haven’t done another thing to it since 1992, except replace the toaster. Now, apparently, we are redoing it.
In the process of preparing for the construction crew to arrive, Mary Ellen started clearing out the cupboards. That’s when she discovered she had more tops to our Tupperware than the actual containers. I wonder if she would have mentioned it if she were bottom heavy?
This lid dilemma is mostly my fault. I always put the Tupperware on the bottom shelf of the dishwasher and an hour later the result looks something like a Salvador Dali clock. There was once a lady in Fort Wayne who saved potato chips that looked like famous people. I have Tupperware containers that look like Jimmy Durante, Karl Malden and Walter Matthau.
Whoever invented Tupperware made the same mistake that the Heinz people made. Not to mention the Bic Pen people. Tops (to everything) should be attached. I’m just glad the people at American Standard attach the lid to the commode. That’s a good thing for men like me.
“Mary Ellen, have you seen the lid to the toilet seat?”
“Did you misplace it again? When was the last time you used it?”
“This morning, right before I brushed my teeth.”
“Did you put it down somewhere? Come to think of it, you never put it down.”
So Mary Ellen spent hours the other day fitting all the lids to their appropriate mates, which resulted in about 15 tops left over without a nesting place. Then she put them in a box to store away. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Why are we saving those tops?
“Well that’s an odd question from a man who has 12 single socks in his top drawer. Why don’t you throw those away?”
“Because when I do the wash, some socks disappear … but then old ones seem to show up. I need back-ups or, I’d be fresh out in a month.”
Later that night, I accidentally threw out all the lids. Even the good ones.
“Well, great, Dick. Now we’re topless,” said Mary Ellen.
I guess that’s one way to spice up a Tupperware party.
