I sometimes do things that serve as a painful reminder to my wife that she is, in fact married to a great big girl.

This week she and I decided to get rid of an old futon that had resided in a spare bedroom in our home. We called the Salvation Army and made an appointment for them to send out a truck to pick it up.

I thought it would make a lot of sense if we were to move the thing to the front door so as to minimize the amount of work the movers would have to do. In my head, the guys would show up at the front door where they would discover that I, as the strong man that I am, had lifted the thing and moved it all the way to the front door by myself thereby doing half of the work for them and they would regard me with respect and they would nod and grunt in approval.

My wife and I began to move the futon and tried to get it through the doorway of the bedroom. This proved to be a task so daunting that it caused me to wonder how in the Hell we had got the thing in the bedroom in the first place.

We stood on opposite sides of the thing and pushed and pulled with all of our might, which really wasn’t much.  Two people one of whom is a tiny slip of a girl who’s scared to do anything that might result in a broken fingernail.

The other was my wife.

Me: Are you pulling?

Her: Yes! Are you pushing?

Me: Of course I’m pushing!

Her: With what?

Me: My hands!

Her: What else?

Me: My face!

Her: Tell your face to push harder!

We stopped pushing and pulling and I stepped back to look at what we had done.

There were scrape marks on the door and the walls as well as gouges and holes in the sheet rock.  One leg of the futon was completely broken off and we realized that we would be unable to free it from where it was stuck in the door jam.

We poured ourselves a drink and sat down in the living room.

Me:  Honey. We need to talk.

Her:  Okay.

Me: As you may already know, I am-

Her: A great big girl?

Me: Well, yes. And I’m fine with being-

Her: A great big girl that pees sitting down?

Me: While I’m fine with that…

Her: Yes?

Me: I really hate it when I have to admit it or demonstrate it to another dude.

Her: I forgot to tell you! I saw Dakota Fanning today!

Me: And?

Her: She said for me to tell you that you’re a big girl.

Me: Can you be serious for a minute?

Her: What are you asking me to do?

Me: Is there any way that when the movers get here tomorrow…

Her: Yes?

Me: We can pretend that I’m not home?

Her: Seriously?

Me: Seriously.

Her:  So you want me to pretend that I’m responsible for the mess in the doorway because I’m a silly woman who didn’t have the sense to wait ‘til her big strong husband got home to try to move furniture and needs a couple of men to rescue her?

Me: Well…kind of.

Her: You realize that this isn’t the first time you’ve asked me to do this for you?

She was referring specifically to an incident that occurred years ago when we first got together before she was aware of just how much of a big girl I really am.

A headlight had burned out on my Honda and it needed fixing. We went to the auto parts store and bought a replacement headlight and headed back home to change it.

I managed to get the bad headlight bulb out, but try as I might, I could not get the new bulb into the housing.  She recognized my frustration and the futility of my effort.

Her: Why don’t we just go back to the auto parts store and ask the guy behind the counter to put it in?

Me: Because they’re a store not a shop. They just sell the stuff. They don’t put it in for you.

Her: They’ll do it for me.

Me: Why?

Her: ‘Cuz I’m a girl.

Me: Honey, guys don’t just do favors for women because they’re pretty.

Her: Yes. They do.

Me: Why, because they think you’ll have sex with them?

Her: I really don’t know that they think that far ahead. They just see pretty eyes right above a pair of boobs and they do exactly as they’re told.

Me: No they don’t.

Her: Drive me to the auto parts store.

Me: Okay.

We drove to the store and she sauntered in by herself. I popped the hood and held the new headlight in one hand and stared forlornly at the place where it was supposed to go. I knew that in about twenty seconds she was going to come back out of the door with a big guy in tow. A guy with a nametag and high hopes for a handjob.

The humiliation of it all was more than I could bear. I studied the bulb housing furiously. I saw how the wires were supposed to connect, but I couldn’t make my fingers pinch together hard enough to seal them.

Everything after that happened in slow motion.

I looked up from the headlight and saw my wife walk back out the door with the auto parts guy right next to her. They shared a knowing look and a furtive smile and my heart sank.

I looked back down at the headlight and with one final burst of adrenaline and another of testosterone; I felt it click into place as it flooded my face with light.

I had pulled it off.

My poor wife was no longer indebted to this mechanical cattle baron.  I had saved the day. I wasn’t helpless.

I beamed as they approached the car. I even blew on my fingers arrogantly as they arrived at the car. Then I stupidly began to speak as though I was anything other than incredibly lucky.

Hank: Didjya get ‘er plugged in?

Me: Oh yeah! Just had some trouble ‘cuz the dealer had the old one installed all wrong.

Hank: What’d the dealer do that was wrong?

Me: Well. You see… they had the CV joint run through the carburetor and that was wrapped around the axlerod.

Hank: Yeah. That doesn’t make any sense.

Me: Are you sure?

Hank: Yep. You’re just saying words that you’ve heard a mechanic say but you’re stringing them together all wrong.

Me: Well, take care. Don’t let the pistons hit you in the windshield wipers!

Hank: Okay. Just go.

Back to the futon fiasco…

The doorbell rings and I scoop up the dog and run to the bedroom to pretend I’m not home.

The movers come into the house and my wife shows them to the futon that now looks like it should be part of Stonehenge.

My wife sneaks into the bedroom and tells me that the movers are two old men.

Me: How old?

Her: One of them is using a walker.

Me: Seriously?

Her: Yep. The other one’s name is Methuselah.

Me: No way.

Her: Not even kidding.

Me: Well keep your voice down, they’ll hear you!

Her: They’re already gone.

Me: They left the futon?

Her: Nope. They took it on a truck and are now gone.

Me: That took like thirty seconds!

Her: Yep. You wanna play Barbies?

Me: Maybe later.

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