Be the Westley

The reason I didn't come back last night is because I threw a tantrum.

I was cooking dinner when it started. Meat and potatoes, actually. Not the food for thought kine, the food for body kine. My hub walked through the door from work and spoke. It wasn't rude, or mean, or chauvinistic, what he said, and yet it gave me the overwhelming urge to chuck the spatula in his general direction.

I didn't do it of course because I'm disciplined like that, but I did get huffy. And puffy. And it's a good thing our house is made of brick!

You see, dummies are harder to lub than regular folks, on account of our stone cold hearts--all that crash testing takes it's toll--but we're even harder to lub when we get all grumpty dumpty up in your grill.

The whole scenario reminded me of a story.

My first semester as an English teacher at BYU-Hawaii I taught this novel by Anne Tyler called Ladder of Years, which opens with a family on vacation. They're all sitting on the beach when suddenly the mother just gets up and walks away.

She walks and walks and walks until she sees a bus, then she jumps on board and disappears.

She wasn't even wearing shoes.

She just up and left her family. Just like that. Without any shoes.

How weird is that? (Even weirder, they didn't come after her.)

But that's exactly what I did last night. I got up from the dinner table and walked away.

I walked and walked and walked. And walked. Until I reached my bedroom door. Then I closed the door behind me and threw myself across my bed.

I wasn't wearing shoes either.

Then I just waited, while my eyeballs perspired, to see if anyone would come after me. Something I haven't done since 2001 while staying at the Kona Hilton Waikaloa. I don't know what I yelled at my hub, probably something like, "Well, you must not lub me then!!!!" before I stormed out of the room and down to the beach where I settled into a hammock and pouted.

I pouted and pouted and pouted, but my hub never came to sweep me into his arms and tell me how sorry he was for being a man.

A few hours later I slunk back into the room with my tail between my legs. Sports Center was on and my hub was sprawled across the bed, sound asleep.

I slithered into bed and whispered, "You were s'pose to come after me."

Isn't that's what Westley did when he met Buttercup? Isn't that what Harry did when he met Sally? Isn't that what Shrek did when he met Fiona?

But about last night. Have you ever noticed how slowly time goes when you're pouting and perspiring? Luckily it wasn't long before my oldest son came to the door.

"Mom, is the laptop in there?" he said.

An hour later one of my twins came to the door.

"Mom, is that scope thing we borrowed from Adam in there?"

An hour later my hub came in an sat on the bed so I pulled the covers over my head.

"You okay?" he said. (He's not great with body language.)

"Not really," I said.

He asked me a few more times what was going on and I didn't answer because really he should already know without me having to spell it out.

"Wow, it's really hot in here," he said. And then he got up and opened the bathroom window before retreating downstairs to watch Sports Center.

True story. Except I added the Sports Center part. He could've been watching America's Got Talent for alls I know.

An hour later I got bored so I snuck out of the house and went for a walk. Course I took Lulu with me because there was a higher probability of being missed that way.

When I returned my youngest boy exclaimed, "Mom, where have you been? We needed you!"

My heart started getting all melty. Then he finished. "We can't find the laptop charger anywhere!"

It's so nice to be needed, don't you think?

($@&*#@*$#@!!!!!)

Please don't ask me if I'm on any punctuation marks or letters of the alphabet, because I'm not. I'm just learning stuff and feeling stuff. About stuff. And watching other people I lub learn and feel stuff. About stuff. And anyway, I'm much better today, even though I mortally wounded my pinky finger with my new kitchen slicer this morning and then had to go to the dentist to get two cavities filled this afternoon.

Fer reals, I'm forty freakin' three, and still getting cavities and having tantrums!

There's a moral here. There's a definite moral here.

Sometimes you have to walk away. Without your shoes. And if nobody comes to get you, gosh darnit, go get yourself.

As Gandhi would say, be the Westley you want to see in the world.

P.S. Tomorrow I pinky promise (with my mortally wounded pinky) that I will finish my BRB post.

P.S.S Do you hate me now?