'It Didn't Follow Me Home, But Can I Keep It Anyway?'

My last post specifically ended with “not to mention my wife,” because it is needful to mention her now.

We have been married for 26 years (exactly half my life) and she has always been the practical one, as I was apparently born without whatever gene operates common sense and the tiny voice in other people’s head that asks, “Do you think you should so that?”

It started during the plans for the wedding. I wanted to wear a canary-yellow tuxedo, songs of Debussy played for the prelude, and for us to “drive” away from the church on a couple of rented llamas. She gave Debussy the nod, but the rest were dismissed with, “Yeah, no, we won’t be doing that.”

I have wondrous ideas that work in my dreamscape, but, they have a difficult time sustaining reality. I may come home one day and say, for example, "Let's move to Spain." My wife would be the one who would pose several questions to dissuade me from such an impractical venture. Her first question being, "Have you lost your mind?" Answer: "Chances are."

So, I was flushed with giddiness to own not only a tortoise someday, but this very tortoise I was looking at, and this very day (it was a Thursday).

As it happened, my wife was away at a conference for a few days in South Dakota (next door to the east).

I stepped out of the pet store, sat in my car and hit speed-dial No. 2 to talk to her.
It went to voice mail. Voice mail requires a certain precision that I don't have, so I usually leave muttered, bumbling words that the listener has to untangle.

"Hi, it’s me. Uh, just calling to say hi, and to, uh, well, there is, uh, I just want to talk to you about uh perhaps acquiring something. Uh, yeah. So call me. Uh, love you."

From the parking lot, I drove to the junior high school to pick up my 11-year-old daughter. She stowed her books and violin in the backseat, then sat next to me.

"How was your day I am going to get a tortoise!" I said.
We decided to venture down to the pet store to look at the tortoise.

My daughter was excited, too – not as much as I was – at the prospect of bringing this one home.
While we were in the pet store, I missed the return call from my wife. She actually said in her message, “Why do I feel like this is going to be about getting a tortoise?”

That woman and her ESPN!