© 2002 G.M. Lousignont, Ph.D.
A poster on the Aussie Finders forum named “SD” attacked people who did not get out detecting with the following comments:
“If you’re not finding gold and you are reading this, then chances are your not out there enough. And the reason your not out there could be because your an alcoholic, or got no mates to go with, or scared of snakes, …….. “
I TOOK GREAT OFFENSE TO THIS AND REPLIED AS FOLLOWS:
You don’t have to be an alcoholic to not be out metal detecting!
You just have to be married.
Last year I missed 3 months of detecting! WHY? Because of “she who must be obeyed!”
It all started off rather innocently.
She mentioned that she would like the guest bathroom remodeled. Our home is 18 years old now so there are things that need to be done to maintain our little 5 bedroom 2 story castle.
I had already completely redone the other two bathrooms, as they were the victim of bath tiles falling off, faucets that were leaking, and linoleum that was peeling up off the floor.
OK, so it took a day to tear out the old shower, rip up the linoleum. I hired the new cultured marble shower to be installed. I figured a day to lay the ceramic tile, it was only about a case worth of tile. Another day to remove the old wallpaper, one more day to install the new wallpaper, and wham, new bathroom, 500 major points for me!
By the way, can any of you married guys tell me how the point system works? After 32 years of marriage I still don’t understand the point system.
New bathroom is like 500 points. Bringing roses for no apparent reason is like 10 points. Buying any diamond jewelry that your wife can show off to her friends is like 1000 points. You know how it works.
So you can go along and be doing all these nice things and acting like a friggin’ whipped puppy, and accumulating all of these points. Hell, I was up to 52,000 points once. BUT! If your wife calls you at work and asks you to stop and pick up a loaf of bread on your way home from work, and you forget, YOU LOSE ALL OF YOUR POINTS!
Not some, not 20, but all of them. Why is the good stuff given a weighted value, like roses 10, diamonds 1000, but a loaf of bread is not weighted, it just takes you back to zero! That’s not fair! Why can’t the mistakes be weighted too? Why shouldn’t a loaf of bread be like 20 points off, and staying out an extra day when you are prospecting, be like 500 points off?
OH NO! One little mistake, and all the points are gone. And god forbid you are one of these guys that does not take your wedding vows seriously! Because if you mess around with another woman, you lose all of your points, and a body part too.
OK, but besides all of that, how do you cash in these points. I mean what the hell good are they anyway? My wife has never given me a list that tells me how to redeem the points. I mean shouldn’t 500 points be redeemable for, let’s say, your favorite meal? 5000 points redeemable for like a 3 day prospecting trip? 15,000 points for a new detector? 50,000 points for a new 4 wheel drive Ute? 100,000 points for a 3 week prospecting trip to Australia? 250,000 points for your wife to dress up in a black lace lingerie teddy, put on a blonde wig, make hot monkey love to you and call you dirty names? (By the way, my wife says even if you could redeem your points, there aren’t enough points in the universe to earn that last one!) She says she will call me dirty names, (asshole, dickhead, butt wipe) but only in the course of every day life, she isn’t going to make love to me too; – that’s just gross! She did say however, she will call me dirty names on a daily basis for free, and not deduct any points. Oh Lucky Me!
So anyone that knows the rules for this point system that our wives use please clue me in!
Anyway back to my story:
Laying tile in the bathroom would only involve about 12 sq. feet of tile, piece of cake!
So I start laying the tile and my wife starts doing her cheerleading act. “Oh honey, that looks so great, oh you really now how to do so many things, you do a much better job than anyone we would hire to have it done, you never fail to amaze me with all the things you know how to do, is there anything you don’t know how to do?”
If she could only say some of these things when we were being amorous, I mean with the exception of, “you do a much better job than anyone we would hire to have it done…” But for some reason, seeing me do manual labor is a bigger turn on for my wife than seeing me naked.
OH GOD, she is so obvious! She is trying to butter me up because she wants something else. I know how she works. Anytime she quits calling me dirty names, it means more work! Beware the nice words, Honey, Sweetheart, Darling, Hunka Hunka a’ burnin’ love.
She says, “Do you suppose…..”
Oh CRAP, here it comes! There are some key phrases that alert you to run for cover, they seem benign enough but they all mean MORE WORK, less detecting time! If you hear any of these, fake a heart attack, a stroke, blindness, anything that will make it appear you are incapacitated! Don’t even think about cutting off a hand, because as long as you have one hand left to work with she’ll just put a tourniquet on the stump and tell you as soon as you finish she’ll drive you to the hospital.
Prepare to fake an attack of possible fatal consequences should you hear any of the following:
“Do you suppose ….”
“You know what would be nice ….”
“How hard would it be to …..”
“Why don’t WE just go ahead and …..”
“You know what would really make me happy ….”
“I think I would be happier if …..”
“What would really look great is if …..”
These are all “DANGER PHRASES,” learn the warning signs and practice your acting skills in faking a stroke, it could save your life!
So she starts, “Do you suppose you could tear the carpet up that comes from the entry way from the garage and lay tile there too being it is right by the bathroom?” Hum? Another 12 sq. feet. “If that will make you happy, sure!” In for a dime in for a dollar! Besides this has to be worth another 100 points right?
OK, and answer me this! Why if your wife knows nothing about doing any of this manual labor does she know all the jargon and how to do it right?
“OK, isn’t the proper way to do the tile around the toilet is to actually remove the toilet, and tile under it, and then buy a new wax ring and reinstall the toilet on top of the tile? Shouldn’t you really be snapping a chalk line from the middle of the work area and work from the middle towards the walls? Shouldn’t you be using a diamond bladed wet saw to be cutting those tiles? Isn’t a circular saw better suited for cutting wood? Are you using the proper trowel to apply that thinset?”
WAX RING? CHALK LINE? DIAMOND BLADED WET SAW? THINSET?
Geezus, what the hell! What was this woman a Union Teamster in another life? Or perhaps an overseer at the building of the great pyramids of Egypt?
So then, like an aggressive cancer, the curse of the tile began to spread!
“Sweetheart, how hard would it be to go ahead and just run the tile from the entry way over into the laundry room and get rid of that nasty linoleum sheeting as well?
“You know what would really make me happy? If you could go ahead and run the tile where the carpet walkway is past the family room, because that carpet always gets so dirty because it is a high traffic area.”
DO YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD MAKE ME HAPPY? Take that damn circular saw and cut my head off now and save me from any more torture. Grant me a quick merciful death, instead of dragging it out!
“Would it be that big a deal just to go ahead and tear the carpet up in the family room and tile that too, that way it would all flow together?”
FLOW TOGETHER???? What the hell does that mean? Are we going to start having our periods on the same days?
“Honey, what would you think about going ahead and running the tile from the family room on into the kitchen, and getting rid of that linoleum too? It would look so nice!”
By the way we are like 2 months into this project! Just as soon as I get a new area tiled, she adds another area. I was starting to worry that she would have me tile the damn garage, the driveway, the street, etc. etc. etc.
“Why don’t we just go ahead and do the entry way from the front door being that leads right to the family room?”
“WHY? WHY? BECAUSE THE FRONT DOOR ENTRY WAY ALREADY HAS CERAMIC TILE THAT’s WHY!
“Yes I know but I think I would be happier if you just tore that out and put the new tile in because the new tile is a couple of shades lighter than the tile that is already there!”
Oh really, well build a bridge and get over it, because I am not tearing out perfectly good ceramic tile to turn around and install more ceramic tile, I’m putting my foot down on this one!
So what does “she who must be obeyed” do? When I am at work one day she gets the air compressor and an air chisel out of the garage and proceeds to bust out a big strip of ceramic tile right down the middle of the entry way. Thus insuring that I would have to rip the rest out and install new ceramic tile as she had so subtly suggested.
My wife is about as subtle as Pam Anderson’s breasts!
So three months later, and 1100 sq. feet of ceramic tile later, I was through “remodeling the bathroom!” This is the truth mates! I’ll take pictures if you like!
What did I get for my efforts? Well she did show up one night in some pretty lingerie! A lot of good it did, my back was so far out from laying tile for three months I couldn’t straighten up, my knees were shot, every muscle and bone in my body ached. I looked at my lovely wife and said, “God you look great you hot little monkey! Now come to bed and don’t touch me, I’m exhausted, I need my rest!”
So, as you can see, there are things much more serious than alcoholism that can keep you from prospecting; and I’m married to one of them!
BCOT!
DOC