Skimlinks

Friday, March 15, 2013

At Your Commando


There's so much laundry coming through the Salfino Laundry Service, it's kind of crazy that for a split second on one recent day, I actually sort of thought to myself, "Am I missing some of Ryan's underwear?"

See, I am the family laundress.  I know, I know, it sounds so quaint.  Yet pathetic.  The fact of the matter is, I never taught my daughter how to do her own laundry, nor, shockingly, has she shown any interest.  Mike's been pretty much banned from it because he'll throw everything in the dryer, let it shrink and leave it there to wrinkle.  And Ryan, well, let's just say he's doing his part by generating his fair share.

But of late, the workload seemed a bit lightened.  I recently found out why when Ryan and I were on line at a supermarket checkout.  I was blithely putting items on the conveyor belt, thinking about how many things I wouldn't be buying if Ryan wasn't with me.

Ryan, apropos of nothing: "Yeah, I've been going commando for a while now."

Me, snapping to attention: "What words did you just say?"

Ry: "I've been going commando."

Me: "What?!  Why are you saying this now?  And why would you DO that?!?"

Ryan: "It's comfortable.  It let's me be more free down there."

Me: "So... there really HAS been less of your underwear in the laundry lately!"

Ry: "Yeah, exactly.  See?  I'm helping you out."


Considering half the time Ry forgets his belt and his jeans are falling down, this latest development had me feeling slightly alarmed.

Me: "FYI, you're not 'going commando' anymore.  For god's sake, this can only end up with me getting a call from the principal's office."

Ry: "Okay, fine.  But it did cut down on the laundry.  Anyway...."

Ryan is a mastermind at distracting people from the main event.  And this time, the "Big Thing" was a fondue pot.  Apparently, Ryan felt like he hadn't really lived because we didn't own one.

His big break came as we were checking out a relatively new Fairway market near our house.  Boxes of fondue pots were scattered serendipitously around the store's fromagerie, fairly FORCING Ryan to put one in our cart.

This led to a cheese buying spree from which European nations are still reeling.

Me, looking at the box, waiting to check out: "Why am I buying this for you?  This is stupid."

Ryan: "Come on, you're not buying that for me. You're buying it for all of us."

Right.  Even though Cara doesn't eat bread or cheese, Mike doesn't eat melted cheese unless it involves something being parmagiana-ed, and I -- who WILL eat anything -- try to avoid things in the "Foods That Will Stick to Your Butt and Gut Longer Than You Thought Conceivable" family.  But sure, Ry, I was buying it for the family.

I stood online staring at the fondue box, flimsily making mental justifications for "investing" in this glorified saucepan and the accompanying bumper crop of cheeses.  I envisioned all kinds of reasons why it would "make sense" to  break out some melted dairy goodness: Movie night. Girls night. A decent report card.  A bad hair day.  Five minutes of being sad.  It was quickly dawning on me that in no time, my only apparel option would be triple XL muumuus.
                  
It was at this point that my son's sixth sense must have kicked in.  As I was picturing catastrophic weight gain and early onset heart failure, Ryan realized his dream of cheese-covered everything was rapidly melting away.

So, Ryan did what he had to do.  He pulled the emergency switch: "Yeah, I've been going commando for a while now."

Like iron bits to a magnet, my random and distracted thoughts suddenly honed in on one issue: "What?!"

And, just like that, I was the new owner of a fondue pot.

Yeah.  He's THAT good.

1 comment:

  1. Mobile Coupons are an effective tool to get shoppers into the store, or on their app or web-store.

    ReplyDelete