Kiki's Torture: Time After Time

Every morning J-Fed goes through this routine where he stands over his jewelry box and stares into it. Was he performing a Jedi mind trick or was he trying to send me a subliminal message? If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was gazing into a crystal ball… or at least one of those magic 8 balls.

What will she make for dinner tonight?

Magic 8 ball replies: “Try again later.”

But I did know better – I knew exactly what he was thinking. Last Christmas, I spared no expense when I bought J-Fed a nice Tag Heuer watched. I wanted to give back to the man who gave me such joy throughout the year. Or maybe I really wanted to win the contest of who got whom the better gift.

Regardless, he was mighty proud of his watch, so proud that we wore it everywhere. And everywhere included on the race car while driving at excessive amounts of speed. It was no surprise when he hit a wall at 90 miles per hour and fractured his arm in three places AND broke his beloved watch. I can still remember him limping in from the track, holding up the watch and proclaiming, “this needs to be fixed” as he dropped it into the jewelry box.

Now I’m not sure if he thought little watch-repairing elves resided in that jewelry box, but he definitely assumed something. And we all know that assuming makes well, an ass out of you and me.

“I guess my watch isn’t getting fixed,” he whined a week later.

My guess was that he was right. Because I most certainly wasn’t going to take it in. He didn’t even have the common courtesy to ask me to get it fixed. He just expected it to get done. Well, I expected him to take out the garbage on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but that didn’t make it so.

The following week, he tried another approach.

“Daddy sure would like to wear his watch again,” he told our daughters.

Now I’m pretty certain our 5-year-old and our 4-month-old weren’t going to concoct some elaborate scheme to get his watch into the repair shop. So I don’t know why he bothered telling them.

One thing I forgot to mention was that the watch sat conveniently next to his wedding ring which he had removed after our last big fight. Perhaps if he wanted his “wife” to get his watch fixed, he should start by acting more like a “husband.” But that was just a thought.

Or better yet, maybe he should just forget about the Tag and invest in a Timex.

After all, they take a licking and keep on ticking… just like poor Kiki does time and time again.