Photo credit: Neil. Moralee via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
Patience pursed her lips as she scanned the article.
“Uh, oh,” said her husband, Phil as he set down a cup of coffee in front of her. “I know that look.”
Patience smiled self-consciously as she put down the paper. “I suppose I should know better than to read about politics by now.”
“Why? What are those troublemakers up to now?”
“Oh, they’re fine. It’s these feminists. It’s like, ‘OK, you can get jobs now. Shouldn’t you be happy?’”
Phil chuckled as he sipped his coffee. “Why? What have they been doing?”
“Everything. They want us to pay for their birth control and their abortions. When they do have kids, they want us to help pay for that, too. It’s like people don’t know how to keep their private parts private anymore.”
“They want us to pay for them to have sex.”
“Exactly. I waited until marriage. I don’t see why any of these women seem incapable of doing the same thing I did.”
Phil took another silent sip of his coffee.
“It’s bad enough that they’ve already gotten rid of fault divorces. Did you see that?”
Phil shook his head.
“Every divorce will now be considered a no-fault divorce. You won’t even have the option of telling the court your husband was abusive or negligent. You can just say, ‘Nope. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t actually want to spend the rest of my life with this person. Take it back.’ And the court does! And don’t even get me started on what they’ve done to custody.”
Phil shook his head again, this time in disbelief. “I just don’t understand what this country is coming to when the American family is under attack.”
“Exactly! As if the life I’ve been living for 50 years isn’t good enough.” Patience let out a huff of air and her husband laid a hand on hers.
“For what it’s worth, I think you’ve done a marvelous job living your life.”
Patience’s expression softened into a smile and she patted her husband’s hand. “Thank you dear. You didn’t do too badly yourself.”
“Of course not. I managed to talk you into marrying me, didn’t I?”
Patience laughed. “It’s not like I made it all that difficult for you. I never was the type to play hard to get.”
“And that’s what I love about you.”
Patience smiled and kissed her husband. “All right, enough of this lollygagging about. I have laundry to do before I go to the store. I was thinking of making meatloaf for dinner. Sound good?”
“Sounds great. I love your meatloaf. And if you’re doing laundry, don’t forget to wash my gray pants. I want to wear them to the board meeting tomorrow.”
“Where are they?”
Phil shrugged.
“Nevermind. I’ll find them.”
She found them all right. She found them, and as she was emptying the pockets, she found a few loose coins, a condom, and a napkin with a phone number written on it.
Well, the napkin could be from anyone. Maybe Phil had been meeting with a business associate who had forgotten to bring his business cards.
As for the condom…well, there could be any number of explanations for that.
Patience folded the napkin neatly around the condom and threw them both in the trash.
To be continued…
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