Gary: a Continuing Source of Amusement

Gary and I have a new agreement. Five days a week he sleeps, and posts on Facebook, and intermittently washes his underwear. On the weekends he goes to his new part time job – being my Personal Entertainer. He wakes up at a reasonable time, takes a shower, then escorts me to the zoo or the museum or the mall.

Not to jinx it, but it’s been three weeks without a rowdy weekend fight. Every Saturday he wakes up, shouts “Weekend!” and I reply with, “Time to go to work!”

He actually does have history as an amateur Entertainer. He was in Sing-Out, the farm team for Up With People. I’m sure the Sing-Out ulterior motive was to Keep Kids Off LSD and Reefer, but from what I can tell Gary’s brain became Gary’s Brain On Drugs anyway.

Here’s an example. Saturday I was bored with my natural hair so I styled it straight. It looked horrible, and Gary chastised me all day long.

“Why would you straighten your naturally curly hair? I like it curly.”

“It’ll curl again tomorrow.” And it did, and for the next four days every time I washed it I let it curl.

But then last night I showered, went to bed with my hair wet, didn’t really gel it or use the diffuser this morning. Therefore it didn’t quite curl today so much as bend out at odd angles.

Gary said, “See! I told you if your straightened your hair you’d ruin it.”

“It will curl again tomorrow.”

“Next time we get our hair cut you’ll have to get a perm.”

“Are you insane?”

“You ruined your hair by blow drying it straight last weekend.”

“Seriously? Do you not know how hair works? Let’s say it’s not hair. If I had a shirt, and it wrinkled, then I washed it, would it come out of the washer wrinkled?” That made no headway.

I pointed out my hair had magically curled Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

He argued that there might be some magic product we could buy to repair the permanent damage I had done to my hair.

(Minutes later)

He just came over, patted my hair, and said “it looks better.” I should have said that I rubbed some dirt on it. That I stuck my finger in a light socket. That I spent five hundred dollars on a placental hair treatment. Or I could just laugh.