Tit for Tat

I go out in the car on Tuesday morning to get my broken lock for DeRay to put back together before we go to the gym; traipse it upstairs where he is at the computer then go back down without taking it.

“Ed, would you please run upstairs and get my lock while I do up the dishes so we can go?”

He pulls a face and growls and carries on like I have asked him to climb Mt. Everest without an oxygen mask.

I hobble up the stairs like an 80-year-old lady with arthritis and bone-on-bone knees.

On the way home from the gym, I remind him that he is not a 2-year-old, that he is a grown man, and one thing we do as adults is help each other out. If you don’t want to do a simple thing for me then, of course, I will not want to do anything for you, like fix your meals, wash your clothes, and drive you to the gym. So don’t plan on lunch today, for like you, “I do nothing for no one”.

“Don’t worry about the garbage can,” he says as we park in the garage, “I’ll get it in, just to make up.” The garbage can is in a snowbank. Even though it’s his job ordinarily, he never does it when it’s cold, slippery or inconvenient.

True to the faith, I fix his lunch.

Because of the weather and other things, we don't go to the gym again until Friday. As he is eating breakfast, he says magnanimously: “If you forget something, I’ll go up and get it;" adding this disclaimer, "even though it’s not my forte.”