“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”
It is tough being married to a Yankee.
I have what I suppose is a bad habit. At least I have been told it is a bad habit. I see it as a way of releasing stress. When I get upset with other drivers for whatever reasons I have a tendency to call them a**holes. Of course, I am in my vehicle and they are in theirs so they cannot hear me, but if Señora is in the vehicle with me it upsets her that I do this.
A while back I discovered an older Canadian sitcom, Corner Gas that I fell in love with and binge watched every episode. I strongly identified with one of the characters, Oscar Leroy, played by Eric Peterson. He called everyone he was upset with jackass. I’ve adopted this habit a bit, and use Oscar’s word in place of a**hole at times. Señora finds it only marginally better.
Señora is not much on name calling, but she has certain Yiddish words that she applies to me when she is upset with me. Yeah I know, hard to believe. One such word is schmaltz, others are putz and shlemiel. She has another pejorative that I find immensely humorous, that she uses very rarely but with great effect. She has even used it in reference to me on occasion… pubic hair. In the scales of name calling it probably weighs in around the same as a**hole or jackass, but it has the mitigating trait of being comical.
We were driving back from Tulsa Sunday and I had used my pejoratives a couple times in reference to bad drivers. At some point Señora, mainly to pick at me, called one of these freeway fanatics an a**hole. I quickly informed her that she could not do that as that was my word. “But,” said I, “let me give you a word. You can call them meadow muffins.”
Yankees… I spent the next five minutes explaining to her what a meadow muffin was. Just in case you do not know, alternative terms might be cow piles, cow patties, dung cakes or from western literature, buffalo chips… to keep it somewhat clean.
I do not think she took my gift to heart.
And so it goes.