There are times in your life when you just simply do something stupid.
My wife is a master hostess. She oozes hospitality and seeks opportunities often to express that gift. She really is quite amazing. It is within this hospitality framework that this incident took place.
I’m not nearly as hospitable as she is nor do I long to have a continual flow of dinner guests.
But being married to her pretty much guarantees that we will, indeed, have a continual flow of dinner guests.
When we got married, the only place we could afford was an apartment located in the attic of an abandoned house. Yes, that is completely correct. The owners of the house had passed away about a decade before, and the son who inherited the house did nothing to clean out his parents stuff or even take canned food out of the kitchen. However, he did rent out the attic apartment that had a separate entrance.
This apartment was equipped with …..well….nothing. No heat. No air. No insulation. No ceiling fans. We did have carpet in the tiny, minuscule bathroom. The kitchen was so small the refrigerator and the stove could not be opened at the same time. The entire apartment was approximately 500 square feet. In all honestly, looking back on it now, remembering the apartment, it’s just as miserable now as it was then. We dealt with extremes. It was ALWAYS hotter or colder than it was outside, it was always stuffy and we always had some type of mold from the lack of attention given to the rest of the house underneath us.
It was truly one of the most INHOSPITALBLE places to live if you like to entertain and have guests over. But that didn’t stop her. Every week or so, we would have someone over for dinner.
In the spring of 1995, a newlywed couple entered our home to have dinner with us. JoAnne made Mexican chicken and green beans. After dinner, the sweet couple and I tried to have small talk conversation while JoAnne cleaned up.
90-Days-Same-As-Cash
The couple sat down on our newly purchased futon. It was our first purchase on credit. A 90-day, same-as-cash futon. The futon was situated in the middle of the room, basically cutting the tiny room in half. There was little room in front of the futon to walk or stand and some room behind it to walk toward to door.
The young lady who was joining us with her husband that night was petite. Super petite. Cute, little, big-smile, tiny-body, petite. She sat right down on that futon and immediately twisted her legs into a tight version of the “criss cross applesauce” position.
I Still Can’t Believe I Did This
While they were sitting there, I stood in front of them, trying to awkwardly make small talk. Just then, our dog came back into the apartment from being outside. She ran into the apartment and was playing and goofing off in the space directly behind the futon.
I looked down, and at my feet was one of her chew toys. A hard, tough, ball manufactured for dogs who chew aggressively.
As if suddenly and unexpectedly I was possessed by baseball demons, I was unable to control the urge to pick up this ball and throw it to my dog who was playing innocently behind our guests.
Scooping up the ball as if there was a line drive hit to center field, I adjusted my stance properly, stepped forward for maximum momentum and I threw the ball with, LITERALLY, my full strength. EVERY. THING. I. HAD.
Instant Regret
My rocket launched chew toy left my hand like a frozen rope …..
I immediately knew the trajectory was off….
It was a surreal moment in time as the ball left my hand and I made eye contact with the young lady sitting comfortably on my new futon…
……….I hit her right between the eyes!
She hinged forward and dropped into her own lap – folding up like a suitcase. The sound of that rubber toy hitting her face still makes me squeamish. But that sound soon faded as the sound of loud weeping overtook the room. Wailing. Deep, guttural, crying.
The sound of the ball splatting against flesh, the instantaneous sound of weeping and the resulting machine-gun peppering of “I’m so, so sorry” were not the only sounds happening at that exact moment in time.
As my wife had finished up the dishes, she had just stepped out of the kitchen to witness everything. [Anyone who knows my wife can tell you that she has a nervous laugh when things are not going well]. So, you can add the nervous laugh to the circus of varying sounds circulating throughout the room. It was truly, no joking, the single worst, most embarrassing moment of my entire life. By a mile.
Then I looked at her husband. Staring off into space. Lightly rubbing his wife’s back as the suitcase was still in the closed position. I still remember that neither of us wanted to make eye contact. I still try to put myself in his shoes. Defend her? Comfort her? Carry her out?
After a grueling 20 minutes of crying, apologizing, nervous giggling and dry heaving, he simply picked her up by the handle and they went home. My wife and I didn’t even speak of it that night. We simply laid down in the humid, stagnant graves that we knew we deserved.
PARENTS: Teach Your Children Manners
About 10 days after “the incident”, we received a note in the mail with the return address being the address of this now famous couple. We opened it, with great reluctance. Much to our surprise, it was a “Thank You” note.
The note read:
“Lee and JoAnne, Thank you so much for having us over for dinner last week. The Mexican chicken and green beans were very tasty. We appreciate you thinking of us”
“P.S. We had a ball!”
