He made me think. And I HATE that!

I’ve been writing to Nick each week as he asked. So I’ve been putting some thought into what I’ve needed to say. There’s been nothing earth shattering so far – the holidays, babysitting, enjoying guest – I haven’t sat around contemplating TTWD. But evidently, Nick has been.

He emailed me a request. He’d talked about it before but this time he worded it in a way that had me doing some of this deep thinking that I don’t like doing. I can come up with hundreds of things I do or don’t do that I think would give Nick ample reasons to spank me. I don’t like to cook or clean, I get to bed late, I ignore clean laundry (that he’s washed) and don’t get it put away, and there are dozens more.

But this request encouraged me to turn the tables. He asked for me to think of things I would want him to change or do or stop doing if I were the disciplinary. Part of his email read:

I now offer the opportunity for you to address issues that I need to consider (realizing that it may be difficult to think of anything(funny man)).  If you are able to think of anything, pick a day sometime this month and give me a heads up of a day or two to get in a listening mindset. Hopefully this will allow you to experience the difficulty in judging exactly how you think it should be handled, and perhaps the awkwardness of being judge and jury. And it will give me issues to consider towards becoming a better husband.

I saw what he was getting at. So I gave it some thought. Although Nick is far from perfect, there was very little I could think of that I would judge a ‘spankable offence’ if I were the spanker in the family. I finally came up with one thing he does that bugs me, but after that one I was down to searching for anything! I found one more, on rare occasions he rinses out his cereal bowl and leaves a cheerio or two in the strainer. Good grief! My husband gives me carte blanche to ‘correct’ anything I don’t like about him and that’s all I can come up with?

While I can spot my own faults quite easily, I now realize that looking at the one you love and try to point out their faults or things they should change doesn't come so naturally.  I guess it all boils down to we just don’t bug each other too much and we’re both very understanding of the other.

This all reminded me of an incident that happened over thirty years ago. We’d been married about three years, when I came home from my college class one afternoon. Nick gave me a funny look and asked, “Do you have anything to tell me?

I gave him a bewildered look and answered, “No, why do you ask.”

“I got a call from the Jerry Springer show today,” he told me. 

“They said my wife had something important to tell me. They said she wanted to tell me on the show and that they would fly us to Chicago and put us in a nice hotel for our stay.”

I was dumbfounded. “What did you say?” I asked. 

“I told them, no thanks. We weren’t interested.” 

“Why did you do that?” I nearly whined. “Now we’ll never know what I was going to tell you!” 

We both laughed and that was it. But can you imagine the furor this could have caused in some marriages? We just weren’t worried. We never did find out if it was really the show or if someone was pranking us. Perhaps we’re just too laid back.

I couldn’t remember the name of the show that had called so I text Nick. He reminded me it was Jerry Springer and added, ‘Did you remember what you were going to tell me?’

I told him, ‘Nope, sorry, but I’m still trying.’ Oh, well.

Nick did get me thinking. Nothing’s changed. But I took the time to stop and think. If it was the other way around I know I would never be able to do a good job as judge, jury and … spanker. Not with someone I love as much as I do him. So I think I’ll cut him some slack. I’ll enjoy our play time and let the rest of DD just sit there on the periphery. It’s there if we should ever need it, but I don't think it will  come into play too often.