Writing Assignment: Ten Reasons To Kill Your Wife Even Though You Love Her

Assignment Start Date: 04/13/17 @ 11:22am EST
Absolute Final Due Date: 04/14/17 @ 11:22am EST

Minimum Length: 2 pages (approx. 500 words)
Class: Husbandry 101 (Mrs. Bergeron v3.0, L.H.D., D.Phil, Th.D)
I love my wife. And yet, she sometimes/never/always/often deserves death at my hand(s). The reasons:

#1 - She nags. Sure, I don’t listen the first nine times because Busy, but that tenth time is inexcusable.

#2 - She interrupts. No one wants to be inconvenienced when they’re being Busy with important Facebook commenting with friends I’ve never met and endless music-sharing with pseudonymic folks who need more Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead bootlegs. (“Anybody have Legion Of Mary’s early show Halloween ‘74 in FLAC?”) And always when I'm chin-deep into Rutracker searching for a live link to an elusive Farflung live LP that, after waiting two hours to torrent, turns out to gargle balls.

#3 - She constantly asks if I’m mad at her. (No, never, nothing. It’s fine. It's not you. Shut up.) Who could be mad at the kindest, most considerate, most genuine woman ever born? Not me!

#4 - She asks me where things are, as though I put them there or that I have any idea what I do in a day and how can I be expected to remember your memories and what do you want from me can’t you see I’m Busy?

#5 - She never has the right word for things. What exactly is a “thingamajigger” and how can I be expected to discover the precise untriangulated location of “on the thing”?

#6 - She needs help with everything. "Geoffrey, can you hand me the phone?" "Geoffrey, could you take the laundry to Katie's?" "Geoffrey, would you clip my toenails?" "Geoffrey, will you please go to bed? It's five in the morning and we have to be at Social Security by quarter to eight!"

#7 - She’s constantly praying, and she nitpicks at my evolutionary nihilism. Whatever, I give up. Insert that David Foster Wallace video here.

#8 - She doesn’t grok all my inner-circle references. And she doesn’t love - or even know - all my favorite movies and musical tastes. She hasn't read any books by my little man. As if the past fifty-plus years of sitting alone in a room avoiding people has just been a waste of my time. As if Monty Python skits aren’t the absolute acme of human accomplishment. As if determining the date and venue of a poor-quality (B-, AUD) Portishead bootleg isn’t as vital as, say, curing cancer or killing fascists.

#9 - She thinks that because I don’t do things exactly as she does, I’m wrong. Wait, that was my last wife. And the one before that. Have I made terrible relationship choices, or am I perhaps a major dick?

#10 - She suggests I do more for myself. Like I have time when I’m constantly helping her do her stuff. Like I really want to write my damned book. When will that happen? Between walking the two [edit: THREE] dogs for the fifth [edit: TWELFTH] time so far today? At four in the morning (again) when the new dog wanders through the kitchen, aimlessly, as though she were blind as well as deaf, the tic-tac of her toes drilling through my dreamtime, and before I can unshutter my eyelids and throw on some shoes, she’s already peed on the floor twice and I have only the towel from her last pee (still dripping, still putrid) to mop it up and how does a six-pound dog urinate two quarts seven times a day and is that evidence of Outrageous Veterinary Bills In My Near Future?

Soundtrack: Marty Robbins, "My Woman, My Woman, My Wife"

Special Thanks to: https://wordcounttools.com/

Labels: Blamethrowers, Self-fulfilling prophecy, Psychological projection, Intermittent fault detection