A huge problem

I learned something very concerning about my wife over the weekend. It’s not quite a crisis, and there’s really nowhere I can turn.

The whole thing started with a sandwich. It was lunchtime, and I breezed home for a quick break. My life may never be the same. There were times early in our marriage where my wife would try to pull one over on me. She’d try to slip mushrooms into my food. I didn’t fall for it. My mom tried it too. I put my foot down. I’m not going to eat those slimy things. “You can’t even taste them,” she told me. I could, and they ruin everything.

There’s only one thing I could ever think of that could be worse. And it happened last week. First of all, my day was ruined. I had planned to sneak in a 10-minute nap. That wasn’t going to happen. I was too upset.

I growled at people throughout the afternoon, preparing for the second I could confront the culprit.

I was ready for her. I made sure I beat her home, and I waited for her in the kitchen, or like I like to call it, “The scene of the crime.”

The look on my face had to let her know how serious this situation was. It was about to get a whole lot worse.

I thought she had just made a small mistake, a mere oversight that had set my day into a tizzy. It was bigger than that unfortunately.

My wife had done the grocery shopping, and I thought she unintentionally tried to poison me. It wasn’t real actual poison, but it may as well have been.

While crafting my lunch, I used up the last of the jar of pickles. She had picked up a new jar, so I twisted open the jar and garnished away. My theory is you can never have too many pickles.

Well, I was wrong. The second what was supposed to be the perfect lunch hit my taste buds, my entire world turned upside down. Well, at least I quit eating my lunch. My wife had purchased possibly the only food as bad as mushrooms (and olives): bread and butter pickles. Yes, without labeling the jar with a skull and crossbones, these inferior pickles were right there for anyone – and I’m the only other one home – to consume. Without warning!

So it was time for the confrontation. I looked her in the eye: “You bought the lousy pickles by mistake.”

She came back with something that shook me to the core: “I like bread and butter pickles.”

The mere sound of hearing those words playing over and over in my memory still jars me.

Up until this point, I thought ours was a solely dill pickle home. They’re the real pickles after all. Bread and butter sounds good, but these don’t taste like bread or butter. They’re awful. It’s like some kind of an experiment gone wrong. Someone ran out of dill at some point, obviously.

Just know that I’m a changed man now. My confidence is a little shaken. My trust in humanity has been lessened, all because of bread and butter pickles.