Heartless on Valentine's Day

Until I understood the various tax benefits, I used to wonder why it was that so many Price Chopper franchisees have their wives and often children working for them. I worked for my mom on one occasion and let's just say it didn't go well. Oh, it wasn't that my mother was a poor boss: on the contrary, she was a very good boss. A fair boss who made sure she didn't play favourites with her son. Which is why I usually got the shit jobs. 

As for my wife, I worked for her, t00--she hired me, in fact, that was how we met. I didn't work for her long, because (a) I was terrible at the job and (b) I couldn't very well start dating the boss. Ten years later, I can tell you I love my wife more than I did when we married (awww, mush); I can also tell you I wouldn't want to work with her under any circumstances. 

When I'm at work, I can't wait to come home and be with her; but if I had to work with her, too, one of us would strangle the other in short order.

(You know the secret of finding the right mate? The right mate is the person who will put up with your shit sixteen hours a day, and with whose shit you can put up over the same period. 24/7? A bit much.)

So...working with relatives can kind of suck. And yet it's so common in our stores as to be almost universal.

I said all that on the way to saying this: I really pissed off the boss's wife yesterday.

We were chatting in the lunchroom and she said

"So, Ken, did you buy Eva flowers for Valentine's Day?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Don't believe in 'em."

Her jaw dropped. She looked at me as if I'd grown another head, which then proceeded to hork loogies hither and yon.

Seeing her look, I elaborated. "Here's a symbol of our love. It'll be dead in a week."

Now my second head was spinning around shooting high-pressure jets of pus, vomit, and occasional gobbets of putrifying flesh.

"Then you dry them, she hissed, and don't ask me how she managed to hiss a sentence devoid of sibilants. "I suppose you didn't buy her chocolates, either?"

I couldn't resist. "Nope. Don't believe in 'em. They're just going to end up in the toilet a few hours later." And then I bugged out before she could, I don't know, string me up by my testicles.

Seriously, though. I really do feel that way about flowers and chocolates. Eva makes world-class chocolates every Christmas and nothing I can buy her would compare to her own.  As for flowers: I repeat, here's a symbol of my love for you. It'll be dead in a week.

Heartless? Possibly. Truth be told, Eva's not much on V-Day, either. It was our first joke, actually. I came in to write down my schedule and Eva got a look at my calendar. On February 14th in ominous black ink I'd written YUCK. She laughed at that (who does that, anyway?) and admitted she felt the same way about the day. Throughout my scholastic career it was always a huge popularity contest I was destined to lose and lose badly. People in grade and high school tended to treat me as if I was shit on their shoe.

But, yes, I have a heartless side. I do know that there's a flip side to my occasional abundance of empathy, to wit: sometimes I don't have any. Take that plane crash outside Buffalo the other day. Forty eight dead on the plane, one dead on the ground. Inexperienced pilots, looks like ice on the wings. Sad story. I feel bad for the people who lost friends and relatives.

But is that enough for the media? Naw. I'm supposed to feel bad for the entire neighbourhood, which is "reeling".

 

Sigh. If a plane crashed three doors down from me, I wouldn't be "reeling". I'd say holy shit, it's a fucking plane crash! and then, after ascertaining nobody I knew was hurt or killed (and helping where I could, of course), I'd get on with my life. 

I mentioned that to Eva this morning. Never fails to disconcert her when I pop out with stuff like that first thing in the morning, pre-coffee, even.

"I think they feel guilty that they're fine and their neighbours are dead", she said, or something like that. It was pre-coffee.

Now here's how it would have looked if the plane crashed into a school for bunnies.

(Tom Tucker, Family Guy)

Okay, the plane's crashed again, three doors down. Holy shit, it's a fucking yadda yadda yadda. 

Inventorying my emotions. Looking for: guilt. Can't find any. Can't even imagine where it would come from. What did I do? Pardon me for being alive, which I was anyway and because something happened three doors down that I had nothing to do with I'm supposed to...what, exactly? Wish it was me instead? Call me callous, but NO.

To those of you who celebrate, happy Valentine's Day. I told Eva that I consider our anniversary, October 14th, to be Valentine's Day; she responded that Valentine's Day for her is any day we get to spend together.

(Aww, mush.)