George and Gladys were listening to the radio three days before Valentine's Day.  An ad from a well-known jewelry company that specialized in diamonds touted that wives would like anything containing diamonds for Valentine's.

"Is that true... would you like anything containing diamonds?" George asked Gladys.  Because I could get you a diamond-edged saw blade." 

George and Gladys go the Rounds

    For as long as George and Gladys have been married, Gladys has taken her shoes off and tucked them into a corner somewhere in the house. George has complained about it repeatedly, but it hasn’t changed her habit. There are often two or three pairs of shoes in the kitchen corners, and some in the living room tucked under the edge of the sofa.

    After opening his top dresser drawer the third day in a row to find a myriad of trinkets and change on top of his underwear, George has a meltdown. “Why is all this junk in my top drawer of the dresser every time I open it?”

    Gladys answers, “It’s all the junk you leave on the dresser. Each morning when I dust the dresser, I don’t know where you want all that stuff put, so I sweep it off into your top drawer.”

    George huffs out of the bedroom after pulling everything off his clean underwear and throwing most of it in the trash.

    George and Gladys say very little to each other all day.  That night when Gladys prepares to get ready for bed, she opens her drawer to get her pajamas and finds three pairs of her shoes on top of her PJs. Touché!

Gladys Doesn’t Understand.

While attending a conference, we heard Zig Ziggler talk about a man who got up one night to go to the bathroom and when he came back, his wife had the bed made. George and the children all looked in my direction and pointed a finger at me. My face turned red and I knew Zig was talking about me! I’ve always been very fastidious about keeping my house immaculate, and at times have accomplished some rather incredible feats to stay ahead of the numerous people creating messes in the house. I have taken great pride in the fact that if I was given ten minutes notice, I could have a large meal on the table and a presentable house for overnight guests.

My son-in-law dropped in the other day. He was talking to Ann on the phone. “Where did you put the registration to the car?” he asked her. He hung up in relief after she told him it was on the sun visor. “I was afraid she’d thrown it away again,” he said.

“Again?” I repeated.

“Yeah. Last time she got handy and cleaned out a bunch of things, she threw away our income tax papers, and I had to pay to get them done over again!”

“Oh,” I moaned. “She got that from me. When the mess is too big to sort out, or it’s a bunch of things I don’t know what to do with, I throw them out. I learned a long time ago that very few things are that important and generally, most of the things I throw away are never even noticed or missed.” He looked at me and shook his head. I could see he just didn’t understand me.

I remember one Thanksgiving when my Mother watched me as I prepared Turkey dinner for fifteen people and never left a trace of evidence on the stove or counter tops. “If you never make a mess, you never have to clean it up,” I explained.

Mother’s was the world’s greatest cook, but she used every pot and pan in the kitchen to prepare the meal—sometimes using two small pots for the potatoes (heaven forbid she could use one large pot to do the job when two smaller pots could boil over and leave a foaming mess on the stove.) A friend who had helped me wash dishes once,  marveled that my Mother had six rubber spatulas. It was true—we had just washed them all. Mother didn’t believe in rinsing and reusing just one.

When my Thanksgiving dinner went on the table, I hurriedly washed the potato pot and the other pans I had cooked vegetables and gravy in. Mother grew impatient with me because her diner was getting cold, but I couldn’t sit down and enjoy myself if there was a mess of dirty pots and pans all over the counter. Mother, on the other hand, couldn’t enjoy her meal if everything wasn’t piping hot when she sat down. I loved my mother, she just didn’t understand me.

One evening I started to clear the dinner table while everyone dashed about the house doing their own thing. George walked back into the dining room and sat down at the table. “Where’s my plate? I left it right here!”

“Oh, Honey! I’m sorry. I thought you were through eating and I threw it down the disposal.”

“No! I just went to the bathroom and I planned to come back and finish eating. George shook his head and left the dining room still hungry. I could see he just didn’t understand me.

I remember watching Ann do simple things like making orange juice from frozen concentrate. First, she’d pull the plastic strip from the top of the frozen juice can and set it down on the counter. Then she pulled the lid off and set it down (juice-side down, of course.) When she finished digging the juice out of the can with a spoon, knife, and fork, she walked away leaving the whole mess of utensils, can, lid, and strip all over the counter with sticky orange juice oozing from each. I couldn’t handle it. “If you never make a mess, you’ll never have to clean it up,” I repeated my mantra. She shrugged her shoulders indifferently. I knew she didn’t understand me.

One day Junior was making pizzas and he complained, “Hey! Where did my knife go that I had right here?” he asked pointing to a spot on the counter. “Oh,” I said. “I just put it in the dishwasher.” “Mom, I’m not through with it yet, and where’s the cheese I put on the counter?” he bellowed. “I put it in the refrigerator.” He sent me to my room. I could see he just didn’t understand me.

Mornings around here are worse than the airport at hub-time. Bill leaves for school at 7:00 am, Jim leaves at 7:45, and George catches the bus to work at 7:50. Junior leaves on the preschool bus at 8:15, and Henry and Ron catch their bus at 9:05. When they’re all out the door, the kitchen looks like a tornado hit. It’s usually about this time I fix breakfast for Ann and myself.

One morning in particular, I put Ann’s breakfast on her highchair tray. She’s really too old for the highchair, but it’s easier to control the mess so I keep her there for my convenience. I set my bowl of oatmeal off to the side on the counter and rushed about the kitchen emptying the dishwasher and putting the clean dishes away, rinsing the breakfast dishes, washing the oatmeal pot, and reloading the dishwasher.

When Ann was through with her breakfast, she handed me her bowl. I washed her off, washed her high chair tray and her plastic bib, put them back in their places, and put her bowl in the dishwasher.

When everyone was taken care of and the dishes were all loaded in the dishwasher, I sighed with relief and sat down at the table to eat my own breakfast in peace. When my bowl wasn’t on the table, I remembered I had set it aside on the kitchen counter. I walked to the kitchen only to find I had scraped my bowl down the disposal with the others and put it in the dishwasher. I walked out of the kitchen bewildered. I just don’t understand me.

Men's Room.

George visits the men’s room at Walmart. He has George Junior in tow and this is Junior’s first exposure to a public men’s room. As he watches George with fascination, he says, “WOW, Dad. You have a BIG pee-pee!”

George explains to Junior that he shouldn’t say such things when not at home. A voice comes from inside one of the stalls, “Well, it could have been worse—he could have said you’ve got a little one.”

The Ladies Room.

Gladys visits the ladies room in the local Walmart. As she enters the restroom, she notices the handicap stall on the end is occupied by someone who appears to be standing facing the commode. Leary of the situation, she quietly enters the empty stall trying not to draw attention to her presence when she hears a small child chanting, “Push ‘em out, shove ‘em out, waaaay out!”

George is a couch potato.

George is a couch potato. Unfortunately, the latest fashion in men’s tight jeans is not conducive to relaxation while watching TV. Accordingly, George unbuttons and unzips his pants to relax while watching television in his man-cave.

Gladys joins him to watch the late evening news and fold clothes after the children are settled in bed. She fills two large baskets with the week’s clean laundry. When they finally decide to go upstairs to bed, George carries one basket of clean folded laundry and Gladys will follow with the other after she straightens the room.

George yells from the stairs for help. Gladys quickly runs to see what the commotion is all about. George is standing on the second stair, his pants have fallen to his ankles where they have ankle-cuffed him. He cannot go up or back down the stairs. He can’t turn around because the basket he is carrying is almost the same width as the stairwell, nor can he bend over the basket to pull his drawers up.

“Well, George, it looks like you got caught with your pants down.”

George originates a new rodeo event.

One might wonder how a cow had such a name as “Skid” bestowed upon it, but truth be told, it all began on the evening George went out to milk the cow. Every time George attempted to pull her into the milking stall, she held all one-thousand-plus pounds firm and would not move into the stall. After repeated attempts, the cow got tired of the fight and backed out of the barn. George wasn’t about to lose this battle and he grabbed a tight hold on her tail, twisted it around his wrist, and pulled as hard as he could. The cow, not liking the discomfort, took off on a run through the corral. George hung tight with his boot heels pressing into the wet muck. The boys gathered on the fence rails, laughing, heckling, and cheering, as George skidded—exhibiting perfect water-skiing form with manure flying out behind him. After circling the corral several times, the cow finally stopped running. More of a taunt to George than anything, the boys christened the cow “Skid” and her legacy still stands.