Obvious

On Tuesday night, while I was cooking dinner and Kyle was doing dishes, I said, “Hey, will you remind me to go to the store tonight and get raisins? My oatmeal is too homogeneous without them.”

To which Kyle replied, “Well, did you check the pantry to see if we have any?”

“Of course I did,” I replied, surprised at the suggestion that I wouldn’t have already.

“Well, let me go check again,” Kyle offerred.

“Grr,” I thought to myself. Then, after a brief pause I shouted to Kyle, who was by now in the spare bedroom (which serves as our pantry), “You know, I’m smart!”

“Of course you are honey,” Kyle pandered to me.

“Don’t just be a yes man, that’s not cool,” I retorted.

“Well, it’s just that you often miss things that are really obvious,” Kyle said, “I just wanted to double check on the raisins for you.”

Ignoring the kind action and instead focuson on the words I said, “I do not! Look, I’m tired of being characterized as disorganized and unaware. I don’t think it’s accurate and I don’t think it’s fair!” I was beginning to get annoyed.

After more protestations from me and a bit of a discussion, we made our peace and continued on with dinner.

A few hours later, right before bed, I took Thunder out for his nightly walk. When I came back in, I turned off the living room light, I turned off the kitchen light, I turned off the hallway light, I turned off the bathroom light, and I walked into the bedroom. “Hey!!!” I heard right as I walked in. I wondered where Kyle was, I hadn’t seen him anywhere since I brought Thunder back in. I paused. “You turned the light off me!” Kyle exclaimed. I had managed to walk all the way into the bathroom and turn off the light on Kyle, without even knowing he was there. 1 Point for Kyle: Erika misses something obvious.

The next day, our friend Karis was over and we were having a big dinner with rice, halibut, cauliflower, and salad. The table was cramped with the rice cooker, the halibut pan, one bottle of ranch dressing, and two bottles of Italian dressing-one nearly empty and one never opened. I generously handed Karis the Italian dressing first, and then after she was done using it, she passed it back to me. While pouring my dressing, I was telling Karis the story of the obvious thing I missed the day before. When I had finished pouring my dressing, I generously handed it to Kyle.  I was quite proud of myself for sharing the dressing and handing it to Kyle instead of just plopping it on the table for him to reach.

“What the heck?” he said, as Karis burst into laughter. I looked at the bottle I had just given him, and started laughing as well. I had used the absolute last of the Italian dressing and then ceremoniously handed it to Kyle as if I had given him something useful.

After the laughter died down Karis said, “Well Erika, I think we can agree that you do miss obvious things sometimes.”