Gitalongs: ANGST REFINED

He came in the front door with a cheery “Hello!” looking spiffy in his business suit. His kids, wife, and I responded in kind. He set his brief case on a chair in the hall and came into the kitchen. In the space of one minute, he crossed the kitchen to his wife at the stove, gave her a noisy kiss, raised the cover on a simmering pot (“Ummm that smells wonderful!”), crossed the kitchen again to kiss me, said “Stay for supper. Be back soon,” and went upstairs.

When he came down 20 minutes later, he was dressed in casuals. We called the kids to dinner and had random conversation with them about the kids’ day at school and my friend's and my work in our gardens. After dinner, the kids were excused to do their homework. My friend said, “Abby and I were talking about all of us taking a trip to the Eastern Shore tomorrow.”

Oh, I'm sorry,” came his response, “but we have other commitments.”

“We do?” she asked, puzzled.

“Umhmm, we're going shopping for a new car.”

“A new car?” she said, now clearly perplexed. “The one we're driving is only a year old.”

“Right,” he said, “but I was in the middle of a multiple car fender-bender on the way home and our car was totaled.” He raised a hand to stem the tide of our immediate concern. “I'm fine except for paying $100 for the cab ride home.”

A tip of the hat to N.J.R. How many of us could pull that off?



Angst Refined by Abby Freeborn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. For permission to use contact randmxcentric@gmail.com