How I Stole a Lifetime of Grand Theft.

My Mr. Husband has a great aptitude for learning new things. His mother says that he was born old, but this old dog is one of the quickest learners of new tricks I’ve ever met. He is able quickly to change in mid-stream and begin swimming anew in a different direction. He is agile and swift like a fox. Though his primary sport be video games, his big brain makes him a mind athlete of the thinking kind. This keen athleticism that Mr. Husband wears behind his eyes comes in handy for me quite often.

For instance, let’s take his new hobby of staring, unblinking, for hours at the TV while he chases cars in Liberty City (Grand Theft Auto IV). This is a situation that does not exactly play in my favor. I am not really there on the screen, so I’m not really … there. I’m here, but not there with him. In fact, we’re still breathing the very same air due to close apartment living proximity, but we’re not living the same life. After four solid days of his being hunched over, controller in hand, space-age signal set on head, eyes never blinking with my bringing him liquids and foods from time to time to replenish my gaming soldier, I’d become quite bored. Yes. I missed my Mr. Husband.

I’ve found that the easiest way for a woman to get her husband to pay more attention is to threaten him with her watching hour after hour after hour of Lifetime TV for Women made-for-TV-movies. In most cases, the “threat” will very quickly cross over into reality because, let’s face it—Lifetime is addictive. There’s a reason that there’s more than one channel for women to watch women being abused by men, other women, employers, and their families.

If women are hurting, Lifetime is putting it on display. I remember the one night shortly after we’d moved in together that the two of us casually happened upon a Lifetime movie. We were both hooked. He even had to know how it all turned out (even though we all tacitly know how it will turn out). The clever and ever-so-crafty high school writing had us in her grasp. We knew then that there is danger in Lifetime. Mr. Husband surmised that we definitely lost some brain cells while being hooked into the movie that was undoubtedly about a woman who married a man who was sweet and then turned evil and probably raped her and all her friends before being victoriously caught by the dumb cop who finally listened after telling the woman she was imaging things for the first half of the movie. Oh, poor woman and her fight to be accepted as not feeble and crazy at every turn! Will we ever win?!

Anyhow, to assist me in what Mr. Husband first imagined was a healthy way of keeping me out of the way of his gaming—he moved my reading chair into the kitchen to watch TV. I cannot read while he is playing his game as there is lots of screaming, music, and gunning motors. (In a house with many rooms, that will not be a problem, but for now we are here in one large room.) He moved my favorite chair—the chair that I bought for $15 from a thrift store during my undergrad stint at college after Jerry died—into the kitchen so I could be more intimate with my TV.

Perfect for Lifetime. Perfect for me to do research on what is clearly the truth about all men. This lasted for one night. Only one night. The next day, I filled Mr. Husband in on my research. I gave him a full report on my surprising findings. I explained to him about how all men are evil and that I was sure he has a dead first wife somewhere that he killed for her inheritance. I just knew it. I told him of all the lies I was now clued in on about how men cheat women out of every possible happiness.

One night. That’s all it took.

He’s moved my chair out of the kitchen and back into the sunroom corner. He’s put down Grand Theft for a few days to let his body straighten back to proper straightness and to allow his eyes to regain their natural moisture from regular blinking. His fingers have become uncurled and he’s more careful of his wife who’s brain appeared to be shrinking. I think we both learned a valuable lesson.