Published Stories

Chronicles

“Shake Well Before Use”

By M. Brant Butler

Saturday morning, muffins in the oven, and my wife Alison decided that our front door needed to be painted a maroon-y red mix. Her argument was that people in the big cities are doing it and it adds “flair.” Well, if people in the big cities are doing it then we must do it. 

I take the can of paint she gives me and start shaking. After a few shakes I decide that I look like a big goofball with my whole body shaking like a jackhammer around a can of paint so I move away from all windows and go sit down in the living room. 

If you’re shaking a can of paint in your living room, where the carpet is off white and less than 6 months old, what do you NOT want to happen? That’s right, you don’t want to drop it, AND you don’t want the lid to pop off. But during a power shake to the right side of my body something terribly bad happened. As this huge can of dark maroon paint was falling toward the carpet everything went into super slow motion. I could see the label spinning towards the ground, I could hear the birds’ wings flapping outside and I even experienced a rather accurate premonition of my wife trying to kill me.

As soon as the can “gently” landed on the carpet about two pints of the dark maroony red mixture of paint gurgled out. I sat there for a second in complete shock. I grabbed some paper towels (as if 5 or 6 paper towels would make a difference) and went to start cleaning. The entire time my wife’s rage is growing like a volcano getting ready to destroy entire villages. She yells a few words that I can’t share with you unless we are on cable TV after dark -- and she then springs into action. 

She began working with some real towels, meanwhile telling me to get some hot soapy water (what are we doing, delivering a baby?) and I know there is no way that this will come out. I am a dead man. 

After patting, rewetting, patting, rewetting, patting, rubbing, vacuuming, rewetting, patting, vacuuming, and rubbing, she went to where all the cleaners are under the kitchen sink. She reached way back and pulled out some sort of stuff that women must keep secret from men for fear of its power. (You see, if we spill a cup full of tobacco juice they throw a fit and we clean it up. They know that we can get it up so they don’t pull out the big guns to clean it. If we see how easy it is for them to clean it we won’t care so much the next time we spill something, so they want us to think everything we spill is an emergency.)

I guess I will have to super glue the legs of the ottoman over the stain before she would let us have any guests over. But after the secret woman trick and using a razor blade to shave off the top layer of carpet, the stain is smaller – and fainter! 

Wait a second, what’s that smell? Is something burning? Uh-oh. THE MUFFINS! As I go running to the kitchen and open the oven a plume of smoke engulfs me, which sets off the smoke alarm. Let’s see, I have a wife with a razor blade cleaning up one red stain (so far), smoke all in the house and a fire alarm going off which could serve to mask my screams as she kill me. I even have a feeling that after she told her story to the judge they would let her go. I rip the battery off the alarm (that is the only way to get one to shut up) and open all the windows to let the smoke billow out. She is now so mad at me she just hangs her head and cleans the carpet. She gets up and told me to add some more of her secret mix, then rub, then vacuum. I do EXACTLY as I was told and guess what, still a stain. Just a faint trace of the stain remains, so faint that you REALLY have to look for it. 

After three hours, she is finished. I am not allowed to paint the door, which was the only good thing that came out of this experience.

So if you don’t want to help your wife paint all you have to do is ruin your carpet, simple enough. Just be prepared for your wife to get a tad upset and use some very colorful language. Just in case any of you don’t hear from me in a while, PLEASE call the police. Have them investigate any fresh mounds of dirt in my yard especially.

end 

CHRONICLES OF A MADMAN

I BLAME OPRAH AND DR. PHIL

When I got married I was under the impression that I was going to marry my wife and only my wife. I admit to not listening that close to the preacher, but I did not, at any time hear him say, “do you Brant, take this woman and Oprah, to have and to hold, to listen to the sound advice of Dr. Phil, till death do you part?” I’m not saying he didn’t say it, because I was in a bit of a hurry to get on with it, but you would think they would point that part out a little more closely. I didn’t even notice a clause like that on the marriage certificate, of course, who actually reads one of those. For all I know that official looking paper could have stated that I have one 10 million dollars or I just became an organ donor. Oh well, my marriage won’t be like that.

Things went well for quite some time. Alison worked all day and so did I. Then she got laid off from her job and was confronted with all of this free time. I knew that if Oprah was on and she had the remote, sooner or later she would find her, I believe that is part of a women’s sixth sense. They have the innate ability to pick out the most estrogen filled tv program at any time. Since Oprah is on at the same time as Jerry Springer and Battle Bots guess who wins the estrogen battle? The last time I watched Oprah was quite some time ago (she was skinny) maybe she has been cancelled. 

After about a week I come home from work and sit down and talk to my wife. I spend what I feel is ample time to talk about our day (3 minutes, I even give her the majority of the 3 minutes) and then I go to the back room to play a relaxing video game. After about 30 or 45 minutes my wife comes in and stands in front of the tv and says (in a gentle non confronting tone), “Brant, I need to talk to you for a minute.” I see 2 problems so far. 1, she is talking calmly, normally she would come in a tell me to “turn off that stupid game and listen”. 2nd, she called me by my name, not a good sign. She comes over and sits on the workout bench, lowers her glasses, and this is where things take a turn for the worse.

She starts off with the comment, “what are some of your expectations of your wife?” I kind of laugh and she tells me that “Alison has some real concerns and you need to address them today.” Why is she referring to herself in 3rd person? It seems that I am not talking to my wife, I am talking to my wife’s therapist. All I could think of is if she was going to role-play, why couldn’t she be Pamela Anderson instead of Dr. Phil. I go along for a bit to see where this is heading. Instead of getting better it gets worse. I find out that I have, what therapists and Oprah listeners refer to as, “emotional constipation”. She then says “your wife has taken a very critical look at the spirit, blah, blah, blah…” (She didn’t actually say blah, blah, blah, that’s just what I heard from that point on.) I did pick up on a few key words, such as “life chain”. I have absolutely no idea what that means but it sound interesting. She also told me, “Brant, do what works!” At this point I start getting a little freaked out and think that I need to contact a priest for the exorcism of the Dr. Phil / Oprah demon that has given my wife a psychology degree. This entire time the tv is off and she is making me look at her, I don’t know how much more I could take. I tell her to quit and she tells me to quite what? The straw that broke the camel’s back was “Brant, you have to name it before you can claim it”. What in the world is she talking about? I get up and storm out of the room. I want my normal, (more normal than now) wife back. 

After thinking about if for a second, it’s not my wife’s fault. If anything like this happened to any man out there don’t blame your wife, blame Oprah and Dr. Phil. They are the ones brain washing our wives into thinking that everything we do is because we are upset with our marriage because we were spanked as a kid. I’m sure that in some rare cases what the Dr is saying is very true. Women are helpers and menders and they want to fix us and the good Dr is giving them ammo to do so, but a gun in the wrong hands can be dangerous. Let me give you this one example and you tell me that I don’t have a point. 

Pretend that you and your wife are looking at a Victoria Secrets lingerie catalog and you see a picture of one of there beauties wearing next to nothing and you say to your wife, “Hmm, see her uh, legs (you could insert any body part here, any one will work). They sure look smooth, shapely, and tan. THAT WORKS, maybe we should take a more critical look at the rest of her body and set goals for you to look more like that! What do you think?” I’ll tell you what the next words out of your mouth will be, “HONEY, SWEATHEART, PUT DOWN THE BASEBALL BAT!”

The End