Dinner, interrupted
It’s the dinner hour. In our house, that usually means something
made with love from Mrs. Stouffer or something special from
Safeway. I know it’s special because the box says so. Safeway
Select. How can that be anything but special? I might even make
something basic with my own two hands, if I am feeling Home
Diva-esque.
Dinner, interrupted
It’s the dinner hour. In our house, that usually means something made with love from Mrs. Stouffer or something special from Safeway. I know it’s special because the box says so. Safeway Select. How can that be anything but special? I might even make something basic with my own two hands, if I am feeling Home Diva-esque.
Our “special” dinners have been interrupted lately by the ringing of the phone. Pitches for money, a “few minutes” of our time for surveys and so on.
The Husband has been home recuperating from a momentary lapse in judgment at a sports equipment store, resulting in surgery. He’s been home for almost four weeks. He’s also apparently lonely.
Under normal circumstances, he can border on rude to the poor schmuck who happens to have the unfortunate job of calling random people during the sacred Mrs. Stouffer’s hour and the abysmal luck of calling the Sinons’ house.
This time, the phone rang and rather than ignoring it as we’ve been doing, The Husband picked it up. I could hear him saying, “Very much.” pause, “Not at all.” pause, “Somewhat.” “Somewhat.” “Somewhat.” “Somewhat.” “George Lucas.”
George Lucas?
I walked into the kitchen and rolled my eyes at him, motioning for him to hang up. He shooed me away. For some reason this was important. I sat patiently on a barstool at the island, listening for a few minutes while pondering the extra special grilled cheese sandwiches on the griddle on the stove, still cooking. They were special because I made them myself and as a kid, nothing was better on a cold night than that.
I began to get irritated when I heard The Husband say, “Okay, we can go to the next section.”
Section? Wait…why isn’t he hanging up on this Bozo. By my count, this survey was taking up more than just a few minutes. He’s been giving one-word answers for more than 15 minutes already.
I wandered into the living room to tell The Kids that dinner (such as it was, in all of it’s tomato soup and grilled cheese glory) would have to wait a few minutes. They didn’t care. I was a little hurt.
The Husband was beginning to pace around the kitchen. “Never.” “DVD.” “Harry Potter.” “Harrison Ford.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “Are we almost done?” He asked the interrogator on the other end.
“Okay, because my wife is giving me the fish eye.” He glided past me, patting my back as if to appease a great beast. It wasn’t working. No exaggeration, 30 minutes had gone by. I raised my eyebrow at him.
“Hey, can you just tell me what the topic is and I’ll just say ‘Somewhat’ for all the answers?” pause. “Oh, sorry. Okay.”
“Somewhat.” pause. “Somewhat.” pause. “Somewhat.”
“A free DVD,” he hisses at me, between responses.
Oh, good lord.
“What happens if I hang up?” He asks after several more minutes of one-word answers.
“So, we don’t get the free gift?”
So what, you ask? He’s got a lot of time invested by then and has apparently struck up a relationship with the guy.
“Well, I didn’t like it, but we had to see it because we saw the first two.” pause. laugh.
“Um… we’d better wrap this up.” Another 15 minutes had gone by and he was looking nervously at me.
“If you have to call back and my wife answers, she won’t be very nice.” laugh. pause. laughs again.
I was about to get offended, and then shrugged. It was true. I couldn’t argue.
Finally, they wrapped it up, after more laughing.
“So, what do you get?” I asked.
“I dunno. They send us a list and then we get to choose from there.”
As annoyed as I was, I laughed at how “special” he is, striking up a friendship over the phone. Even more special than my homemade grilled cheese.
