end AH wood wock five hund-rred may-uhls...

... end a-AH wood wock five hund-rred morrr justa BE-ee the man who wocked a thew-zund MILES too fall doon atchyoorr door...

...

... da-dulah-dah...

 The Proclaimers?  Benny and Joon?  Anyone?


I love this song.  A, only the Proclaimers even have accents when they sing (if it's not Scottish, it's crap).  B, it's so darn catchy and it is in the perfect vocal range for my brothers and I.  We'd sing it in the car all the time.  ...Well, we'd sing it whenever we weren't airbanding Boston's "More Than a Feeling," anyway.


But most importantly, I got a little taste of what this song truly meant a while back.


A few posts ago I divulged about the time B.  speckled every surface of our little hobbit apartment with small square green "I Love You" notes after one of our tougher fights. 


Ok kiddies, here's another tale from our greatest hits of a lovingly dysfunctional, polar-opposites-but-too-crazy-about-each-other-to-let-it-phase-them couple anthology:



B. was in summer school and working.  I was working full time.  I got up earlier than her and had some time before work.  She groggily requested that I run to get her something for breakfast while she get ready.  I was ashamedly short on cash at the time (payday could not come soon enough) so I grabbed her debit card and left to fetch the desired treats.  I returned triumphantly with my kill slung over my steed. My efforts were rewarded with a brief peck and then it was back to the morning ablutions.

She went to class before work.  I went straight to work.  About mid-day I thought I might grab some lunch from the bookstore nearby.  I looked in my wallet to find that I had left B.'s card inside.

My heart sank.

...Oh I was so dead.

Sure enough, as I took my lunch break I saw that I had a voicemail.  I then heard a very panicked, very frazzled B. asking where her card was, had I taken it and forgotten to return it, was it lost, was it home somewhere.  Brief, but panicky, with an urgent plea to call her asap to find out what happened.
I called, explained that I had forgotten, and found out she discovered her cardless wallet in the middle of a drive thru on her way to work.  She had to use an emergency card to get lunch, unsure of how much was on the account.

I was so... so dead.

She asked me why on earth I had taken it in the first place.  I sheepishly admitted that I was short on cash.

Then why didn't you use the one dollar bills in my wallet?  I've been in a panic all day!  

I'm sorry I forgot your card and I didn't know you had ones.

At least let me know when you're taking the card.

But you were still just getting up, I wanted to let you sleep a little longer.


...Etc.

You get the idea.  Lots of sorrys, lots of frazzled wife.  Lots of angst and tension.

I feel stupid on a regular basis, but this really took the cake.


I went back to work and stewed about how to fix this.  She only had a little food this morning, a small lunch, and she was looking at a long afternoon of broke hunger until her shift ended at 9pm.  Because of me.  I felt terrible.  I tried to rationalize it:

I wouldn't have taken the card had she not sent me on the errand in the first place 

I thought she'd have her credit card on hand if there was an emergency

Nope.  I just forgot.  I'm an idiot.


Then an idea popped into my head.  I hopped onto google earth and mapped it out.  It wouldn't completely redeem the situation, but it might earn me some brownie points.  I could make it. I stayed at work as long as I had to and then clocked out a little earlier than usual.  Then, with my backpack holding my jacket and my earphones plugged in, I began marching.

Two minutes later my mp3 player died.

This would be a long walk.

The silence gave me a lot of time with my thoughts; I had plenty of time to stew over the "injustice" of it all, how much of a "victim" I was.  Then my brain passed through several stages of anxiety, frustration, resentment, sadness, anger, purpose, then finally an eagerness to show her up.  Well, sort of... I still forgot the stupid card, it's not like this would make up for it.  I was steaming for a while, but that long walk was probably just what I needed.

It took about an hour and forty-five minutes.  It got colder as the sun started going down, but I had been walking for a while now, blood was pumping and I didn't feel the need to don my jacket.

I ended up taking a different route from the one I had mapped out, but I got there about an hour and a half before she was going to clock out.  I walked in, went up to the desk, slapped the card down, we locked eyes for just a moment...

Then I turned around without a word.  I imagine it as the sort of slow-mo walk away you see in action movies where the car or the house blows up behind the hero, but he's too cool to look back at the explosion.

HAHA! that'll show her.

But nothing happened.  No explosion.  No response.  Crap, all this and no reaction? 


She told me later she was just in shock, working out the possibilities in her head.  She had the car, how did I get here?  She called after me, and then we walked around for a bit and talked things over.  It didn't fix everything, but I think she really was touched that...

...that AH wood wock five hund-rred may-uhls. end a-AH wood wock five hund-rred morrr justa BE-ee the man who wocked a thew-zund MILES too fall doon atchyoorr door...

...Dah-dulah-dah...

Actually, I found out later it was about six and a half miles.  But still.

She's worth it.  We talked it out, made up, we've moved on.  I worry that she still feels guilty about it.  I don't think of it as the time she left me a panicky voicemail, though.  I remember it as the day I screwed up, starved my wife, and then walked across town to try to make things right.



We forget things.

Not long after this I got a call at work telling me that my wife left her keys in the car and I needed to bring her mine to let her in and drive to work.  I work a mile from home, so I often walk or bike if the weather's good.  She works somewhere much farther away.  I'm just glad she left them in there when she was only a mile away.  That's a long walk to make.


But I would do it.  For her.  AH woood.



S