You Want Me to Find a What?

Bald Man — Sat, 17 May 2008 04:30:45 +0000

She invited me to share my side of the story, so here it goes.

I’m on Day 6 with the kiddos. Things have been going very well, but I’m ready for Kerri to get back in so many ways. (Get your mind out of the gutter.) I’m not really expecting her until bedtime; she and her girlfriend had no reason to hit the road early that morning. So when the phone rings late that afternoon I figure they’re about halfway home. And I’m pretty much right… except that they want to make a pit stop on the way home. “Um,” she says, “can you call the tattoo parlor and see how late they’re open tonight?”

I froze.

Now, as Kerri said, it isn’t that I had an issue with her getting a tattoo. I’ve heard her talk about it for years, and I’m fine with it. It ain’t my body or my pain, right? I just couldn’t deal with it at that moment. The fact that they were in the middle of nowhere on the interstate and her calls kept dropping didn’t help. I wound up leaving her a message saying I can’t cope with this now. She was crushed. This was something she’d been wanting, she was so excited, and I wasn’t.

Rewind: A year or two ago I needed new glasses. My old ones had broken, and after several weeks of putting it off I finally renewed my prescription and accepted the fact I had to go shopping. I hate shopping. I’m also cheap, so I went looking at Sam’s Club. I started browsing through the optical department, and the kids started talking and climbing and fighting and asking questions and giving me their opinions and… and… and…

Yep. I froze. It was just too much for me to handle. We walked away from the optical department, I caught my breath, and a few minutes later I went back by myself to give it another go. (I wound up picking one’s from the kid’s section; I have a narrow head.)

Fast forward back to the tattoo: An hour or so later, Kerri calls back completely crushed and desperate to know what’s wrong. “Remember when I was shopping for my glasses, and I completely froze?” I asked. “I had the same feeling and reaction.” Ah… now she understood. Eventually we worked through everything, and I was even able to suggest she call a friend who might be able to help her out.