After 55 years…The Big Fight



My parents celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary last May. I’m not sure which one that is—diamond? gold? arsenic? Whatever…they’ve been together 55 years, and they get along great. Then last week it finally happened—The Big Fight. The trigger? My mom wanted to get into my dad’s pants.

A little background: Sears (a Canadian department store chain) recently declared bankruptcy. They’ve been liquidating and, as everyone knows,“liquidating” is babble-speak for “buy it fast—there’s only one left.”

So my dad did. He bought a pair of pants. He bought The World’s Most Perfect Pants. They’re soft, comfy, warm, and they fit him perfectly. They fit my mom perfectly, too, so she asked my dad to give her his new pants—and that’s when the fur (or, in this case, the polyester) flew. I’ll summarize their arguments, so you can pick sides…

Mom’s perfectly valid arguments:

“They fit me perfectly…and they have pockets! I love pockets.”

“That’s the last pair at Sears. I checked! I’ll never find anything that perfect.”

“You’re only wearing them to tai chi—I’d get so much more use out of them, for heaven’s sake!”

“You wear the same old pants all the time—if I take these ones you’ll never notice.”

“You’re probably just going to hide the damned things in your closet. Give them to me.”

Dad’s perfectly valid arguments (I may be paraphrasing):



“But they’re mine.”

“But they’re mine.”

“But they’re mine.”

“But they’re mine.”

“But they’re mine.”

I’m not recommending stubbornness and repetition as a debating strategy, but I will say that when my parents drove off a few minutes later, my dad was still wearing the coveted pants. How this will end is anyone’s guess, though. Eventually he’s going to have to take them off—and my mom does the laundry.

12 thoughts on “After 55 years…The Big Fight



  1. Arnold Forsyth

    Brenda: As the person in the middle (you are the only child) YOU should be the “empire” and recommend a solution such as: take a pair of cutting tools (like from the garden) and cut the pants up the middle so each of them have one leg each.
    Problem solved

    Arnold
    Carole and I have been married 56 years so I do have experience in solving this type of problem!

    Reply

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