By Christie A. Hansen
If you're a married man, stop
reading now. I mean it. This is your last sentence.
Not one more word.
... Okay ...I think they're gone.
And now that it's just us women, I can safely talk
about one of our closely kept secrets. I suppose you
could even call it a dirty little secret -- we hide
garbage from our husbands.
We didn't start wedded bliss
intending to hide things from our husbands, it just
happened. One day we threw away his old pair of
sweats with at least three holes in them, and the
next day he fished them out and demanded to know how
we could throw away an article of perfectly good
clothing. Not wanting to get into another debate
over the definition of "perfectly good", we started
burying things deeper. And deeper. And deeper.
Candy bar wrappers. Evidence of a
pricey shopping trip. Leftovers that didn't get
eaten and eventually spoiled or meat that suffered
from third degree freezer burns. Not wanting to
defend ourselves before our husbands, we simply bury
the evidence.
Should you get lax in your garbage
hiding habits, you could have a conversation like I
had recently.
My husband: Why did you throw away
this perfectly good piece of bread?
Me: You mean the heel? You know no
one around here eats the heel of store-bought bread.
My husband: I eat the heel.
Me: Yes, and how often do you eat
sandwiches? Maybe once a week? With the way these
kids clamor for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,
if I saved every heel of bread for you, you couldn't
keep up. Pretty soon we'd have more heels of bread
than we'd know what to do with.
My husband: I could keep up. Try
me.
And so, now I'm left with a
cupboard full of multiplying heels of bread. All
because I slipped and didn't hide the heel inside
the empty cereal box like I should have.
A friend of mine, who has been
hiding garbage from her husband for years, has
problems of her own. He's onto her. My friend used
to wait for garbage day before trying to throw away
sensitive trash. Before leaving for work in the
morning, she'd roll the can out to the curb and
deposit her stash. But now her husband checks the
can after she's left. Undeterred, she now takes top
secret trash to work to dispose of or enlists an
accomplice - me. He'll never think to look in my
garbage can.
Perhaps you thought you were alone
in your garbage hiding habits. Think again. I've yet
to meet a woman who doesn't hide garbage. Maybe
there's one out there, but I don't know her. Take
comfort knowing that there's safety in numbers.
P.S. If you're a man and you
disregarded my warnings and read this column anyway,
that's okay. I made it all up.
About the Author: Christie A.
Hansen is a wife and mother of three young children.
Feeling that parents wanted to hear from someone
besides parenting "experts", in October of 1997 she
began writing her self-syndicated column, "From the
Trenches." Christie's weekly columns give readers a
chance to laugh and reflect on ways to enjoy the
challenge of raising children. Read more of her work
on her website: www.fromthetrenches.net and contact
her by e-mail at
christiehansen@usa.net |
