When my daughter moved, she put my husband in charge of watching me. Yeah–watching me. That’s how she said it, too.
“When I’m gone, you’re in charge of watching Mom, Dad. You have to keep her from hurting herself.”
I’m protesting, but I could as well be 4 years old for all the mind being paid. If it wasn’t so funny, I could be offended I’ve just been assigned a babysitter.
He’s listening closely, and solemnly agrees to take on the job. I’m not surprised. I’ve heard them talk about me as if I were a dangerous lunatic before, after all. It’s one of those 60/40 family jokes: 60% true, 40% joke.
What I didn’t expect was him to take it so seriously. Evidently, I need a lot of watching. I have also learned some of this goes on without my knowledge. But some, I definitely notice.
Like the other night…a hunk of dinner is stuck in the garbage disposal. I get ready to stick my hand down in there to fix it, but I’m kind of waiting for hubby to move out line of sight. I know he’s paranoid as all heck, and won’t want to watch me stick my hand in there, even though the thing’s off.
Wait…wait…wait…He doesn’t move.
Hey! He’s standing there to keep me from doing it, damnit!
I pause a minute, feeling completely lost without use of my hands. I start to walk away to figure it out later (or, more likely, come back when he’s not watching)–until he offers an alternative: I can use some tongs to pull out the food. I stumble around for a minute, but it worked.
And this is how it’s been. I think it’s quite silly as he’s overseeing me taking a cup of coffee out of the microwave, but begrudgingly admit he probably had a point about the sticking-a-fork-in-the-plugged-in-toaster thing.
Probably.