I am about 80% sure that I won this debate. (Quotes of the Day,

"I don't care if it says Firefly or Firefox... or barf."
-- Sweetie, talking about her shirt.

Sweetie had two shirt-related adventures yesterday, although I'll forewarn you that I'm using "adventures" loosely in that sentence, as they were "adventures" only to someone like Sweetie, who, after venturing down to State Street to spend her Mother's Day present from Mr F and Mr Bunches (who gave her $50 to go shopping on State Street) said, later on, that she felt sort of wind-burned and tired from going out.

We gone there because Sweetie, for Mother's Day, gave me a list of things the Babies! could buy her, and the list included "a t-shirt," and also various gift cards, and Sweetie then gave me $50. So on Saturday morning, we were getting ready to go to State Street to take the boys to the Farmers Market and bum around for a while, when it occurred to me that later on, I would have to take Mr F and Mr Bunches back to State Street to get Sweetie the t-shirt she wanted, a shirt I knew she wanted because she'd pointed it out to me on TV a few nights before, and I'd paused the TV and taken a picture of the screen with my smartphone, thereby proving that there is no amount of phenomenal technology that cannot be trivialized in my hands. (The picture I took of the TV to remember what shirt Sweetie wanted is the picture on this post.)

Realizing that I'd be going to State Street twice, and being lazy, I then suggested to Sweetie that for her Mother's Day gift, we simply take her shopping, right then and there, and she could buy herself whatever she wanted, up to the limit of the $50 she'd given me, and Sweetie agreed, which, if you're keeping track, means that pretty much the Babies! did not give Sweetie anything for Mother's Day, the gift of "cash" involving, typically, less thought than even a gift card, and in this case, even less thought than that, in that Sweetie hadn't yet given me the $50.

In short: For Mother's Day, Sweetie got $50 out of the bank and went shopping, and my involvement on behalf of her two youngest children was to suggest that. If it's the thought that counts, then I still got off easy, as I didn't even think very much about that idea.

(Just so you know, she's getting taken to a movie and dinner by the older kids, who although they will likely have to borrow money from her to do that will have their hearts in the right place.)

We'd "gone out," on the shopping trip that so wore Sweetie out, to two stores, and the second of the two was only so that Sweetie could use the restroom. True, we'd also gone sort of out of our way to go past the Old Red Gym on campus, because the Old Red Gym looks like a castle, and Mr Bunches wants to see it, but in total Sweetie was "outside" for about 20 minutes on 60-degree day.

Although, now that I think about it, Sweetie bought two shirts at that store, so technically she had three shirt-related adventures* on a single day

*Again, used very loosely.

The other two shirt-related adventures were, in no particular order**

** other than the order in which I put them, which is a very deliberate order that I chose for dramatic impact, because I'm always conscious of the dramatic impact of the parts of a story I'm telling, making me more or less the Christopher Nolan of blogging.***

***I don't think I actually was thinking of Christopher Nolan there; I was thinking of the guy what everyone says actually wrote all of Shakespeare's plays... Christopher Marlowe? Was that his name?****

****Having now looked it up, it was Christopher Marlowe I was thinking of. No offense, Christopher Nolan.

first Sweetie was looking at a catalog last night, and in it, found a shirt that she liked, and said to me "I like this t-shirt. Do you think I should get it?" and she showed me the picture of the shirt, and I responded, and I quote:

"Ho... Pie?"

That's not usually something I say to Sweetie, as our conversation usually doesn't involve either hoes or pies, except for those occasions when I point out that I am not really crazy about pie, and then Sweetie mentions that I love pecan pie, and I agree with that but say that's kind of a special occasion thing, which prompts Sweetie to then also list the other kinds of pie I also have enjoyed in the past (peanut butter, candy cane, lemon meringue... etc.) because marriage is all about proving your spouse wrong on a point so completely minor that it cannot possibly be blown up into an argument (that's called "winning at the marriage"), so back to the story:

Sweetie said, and I quote:

"What?"

And I pointed out to her that the shirt had "HOPE" spelled out in messy writing on two lines, like this:

H O

P E

Only messier, larger, and on a shirt in a catalog, so that when I'd first looked at it, I thought it read "Ho Pie."

Having just ruined that shirt for Sweetie the way I once ruined her first choice for a wedding dress -- I'd been asked to look at one in a catalog before we got married, and I looked at it, pronounced it ugly, and said that the "antiquiing" effect made it look as though the dress was old and getting kind of rotten, all without knowing what any sane, rational fiance would have known*****

*****What Any Sane Rational Fiance Would Have Known: If you are asked to comment on a wedding dress that is not actually in the act of being worn by someone else, it is probably the one your fiancee is thinking of buying, and also your opinion will NOT EVER help anyway, so just say you like it.

so Sweetie didn't get that dress, and I got no credit for helping prove true the old adage that the groom seeing the wedding dress before the marriage is bad luck, and on this occasion Sweetie did not decide to get her HOPE t-shirt for fear, I guess, that more people than me would wonder what a Ho Pie was and why Sweetie was in favor of one.

The third, but actually the first(*6)

(*6)Remember, I put them out of order for dramatic effect,

t-shirt adventure began with me noticing earlier that Sweetie was wearing a Firefly t-shirt, and saying "When did you get a Firefly t-shirt?" Sweetie then reminded me that she'd shown me the t-shirt earlier but first said:

"I had one," which I knew was kind of a lie because I also knew that she had only recently shown me the Firefly t-shirt online, an occasion I remembered because she'd asked me to come look at it and said:

"What was Firefly? Was that the Nathan Fillion show?"

forcing me to remember who Nathan Fillion was, and briefly thinking he was the guy who'd written all of the Shakespearean ouvre before I got it sorted out and accused Sweetie of wanting to buy a t-shirt solely because she thought the guy who used to star in the TV show which was referenced on the shirt was hunky.

(Which she does.)

When she turned up with the Firefly t-shirt, that conversation had happened recently enough, and had involved enough men who were (are) better looking than me, that I had not yet overwritten it, in my mind, with wondering whether, in the comic books, Green Lantern and Green Arrow had been teamed up because they were both Green superheroes.(*7)

(*7: It sort of seems like it, doesn't it? They really didn't have anything else in common and yet had their own magazine in which they had adventures together, so apparently in the superhero world, having "green" in your name is enough to link you to all other green superheroes, which is I bet how Match.com works, too.)

So I said to Sweetie: "No, you didn't. Did you just order that?" I was being careful, though, because unlike a noncontroversial topic like "You really do actually like pie, so why do you say that?" a topic like "Ordering T-Shirts" can actually be construed as an attack on a spouse, and I didn't want to attack Sweetie, I just wanted to prove that (a) she didn't always have a Firefly t-shirt, but (b) she'd recently ordered one, so (c) she'd sort of just lied to me, which meant that (d) she loved Nathan Fillion and (e) I would get to watch my TV shows later that night, which was important because I'd taped four episodes of Monster Bug Wars and wanted to watch them.

Sweetie just fessed up, though, saying "Yeah, I ordered it and I had it," which is the kind of wifely logic you can't use to get to watch your TV shows, so I had to press on with Point (d) to get to Point (e), and said:

"You just got it to get a shirt that reminded you of Nathan Fillion because you think he's hot."

Which almost makes sense if you don't think about it at all.

Sweetie said: "No, I didn't, I just like the color and the shirt. I don't care if it says Firefly or Firefox... or barf. I'd have gotten it no matter what."

Which left me with nothing else to finish up with but:

"You'd have bought a shirt that says Barf?"




Click here for more Quotes of the Day.