Beech Tree News Network

My husband, Garey, is one of those annoying people who learn from their mistakes.  Take for instance, the sliver of pencil lead that has been embedded in his leg since middle school.  When I asked him about it, he said simply, “Never pick on a twelve-year-old girl walking back from the pencil sharpener.  And I guarantee you, he hasn’t since, and never will again. 

I’m not cut from the same cloth.  It’s not that I don’t remember the mishaps I’ve encountered; it’s just that I will try the feat again to see what happens this particular time.  (And yes I know what Einstein said about doing the same thing over and expecting different results.)  I take in to account that the variables might be a bit different each time. 

I’ll admit there is a little naivety mixed in with my optimism, like the time I shot out our bedroom window with my air pistol.  Garey was incredulous over my lack of foresight.  “Didn’t you notice that the bedroom window was in a direct line behind the Coke can you were shooting at?” he asked.  “Yes,” I said, “But I didn’t think I would miss.”  He was speechless, and that in itself is a feat that nobody else, before or since, has ever been able to accomplish.

Once, I set our storage shed on fire while burning trash in the barbeque pit.  Who knew you needed to keep your eye on a fire whose only fuel was a couple of cereal boxes and a few pot pie cartons?  I mean, it takes two Sunday readers, a pressed wood starter log, and a half gallon of rocket fuel to get the fire started in our fireplace.  Anyway, the next time I was burning boxes, I made sure the fire site was far away from our storage shed; I just failed to look up.  That time, I burned off the overhanging branches of our walnut tree next to the driveway.  In my defense, I’m short and I didn’t notice them.  There was little harm done, though; and if I hadn’t burnt off those branches, they might have lived to put scratches on Garey’s pickup.  (I bet he never considered that as he was shaking his head in disbelief.)

Garey has always lived by his father’s mantra, “Bought wit is the best you get.”  He has stood back many times and let me have at something he knew wouldn’t work just to let me suffer the consequences in order to let me learn from my mistakes.  He let me string myself upside down in a tree, ski headlong into a snow bank on a slope that was too advanced for my novice skills, and bruise the daylights out of my shoulder with a shotgun that kicked like a mule—I didn’t want the girl gun.  Oh yeah, and he watched as I tried to squeeze a 36 inch wide love seat through a 30 inch door.  That was exhausting!

I don’t know if bought wit is really the best you get, but it had better be, because it has cost me a fortune.