On Not Being Rewarded

My wife's no sitcom character, but she does have theme music, a character wardrobe, and catchphrases.

My wife's theme music is the soundtrack to "Amelie." It's pixie-like, precious, precocious, and it's the soundtrack to the first film she ever suggested I watch. And, come to think of it, it may very well have been the only film she ever suggested I watch. My sweet wife tromps through life with a charming air about her, an Audrey Tautou-esque air about her. Bright, lovely, at times blithely unaware of her surroundings-- you almost expect a garden gnome to send her a postcard from Denmark.

Her wardrobe is from Anthropologie. Color-dappled skirts, bright red overcoats with huge buttons, embellished tops in kind hues-- she is always dressed for delightful adventure, wherever she goes, and I am always interested in seeing what she chose to wear on a given morning-- because, damnit, it's fun.

And she has her catchphrases. Some of them are old standbys, but one has developed recently, and I think it's a funny one, because, on its face-- it's quite absurd. Whenever my dear Mrs. Apron gets fucked over by Life, as all of us do, she likes to say, "I feel like I'm not being rewarded right now."

This is going to sound awfully condescending, and I apologize, to you and to my wife, in advance, but I find this catchphrase of my wife's terribly funny, as I mentioned earlier, and charming at the same time. The catchphrase is used whenever my wife does what she perceives to be "the right thing" and then ends up getting the proverbial pie in the face. Perhaps being proactive and taking the dogs out for a walk and then having Molly poop on the floor not five minutes after retuning from the walk. Maybe taking a shortcut only to have the misfortune of driving behind a Toyota Camry with a leather-faced codge-ass behind, his wool Fedora barely poking up from view behind the headrest.

Of course you're not being rewarded, silly. Nobody gets rewarded. Only pathetic, untalented, tow-headed children on local township soccer teams get trophies. The rest of us get a punch in the schnuts.

On Monday, I had off from work. I awoke semi-erect and with an intense craving for a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich from a local bagelry establishment. And coffee that I didn't have to make myself. So I dressed, walked the dogs quickly, got in my car, and drove off.

It was a little after 9:00am by the time I hit the road-- prime time for all the elementary school buses to fuck up everybody's commute/bagel sandwich run. It took me twenty minutes to get to the the bagel place, (should have taken ten) but I didn't care, because I had a coupon!!!!

AND I REMEMBERED IT!!!!!!!!

I even remembered my super-cool, keeps-hot-beverages-hot-for-nine-hours coffee mug!

What I forgot, I realized as I pulled into the parking space at the bagel store, was my wallet.

See, this is what happens when you change trousers. We should just wear the same pair all week, then this wouldn't happen. It's not like we, most of us, dookie ourselves. How are our trousers somehow unacceptably dirty after one day? Come on. Give me a break.

I had remembered, during my quick dressing session, to remove my belt and put it on the new pair of trousers, put my cellphone and clip on the new pair, too. But the wallet, well, that didn't make it in.

I wanted to give up. But I couldn't. So I drove all the way home, stormed upstairs, got the wallet, and drove back to the fucking store.

I placed my order and presented my coupon.

"Oh," the topographically pimpled clerk behind the counter frowned as he pointed to my coffee travel mug, "if you're using that, I can't accept the coupon."

I feel like I'm not being rewarded right now, Tom, I wanted to say to him. Instead, I just looked at him. And I blinked three times.

"You know what-- forget it. That's stupid. Nevermind," he said. I wanted to kiss the angry, red bumps on his cheeks. Reason had prevailed. Logic had won the day at this crummy little establishment, at which, I might add, I was the only patron.

I could have gone on a torrential rant about how I'm not being rewarded for doing the environmentally friendly thing, by bringing my own mug and not using another insidious paper cup.

I could have done it.

But my wife would be the first one to tell you that I hate the environment. It's one of her catchphrases.

Jesus + Magnets = Penetratingly Awesome

I have a maxim in my house when it comes to mail:

"If it's not in an envelope addressed to either me or my wife, or both, it invariably gets thrown in the recycling bin."

This policy bodes rather ill for the following items of mail:

* Solicitations

* Newsletters

* Junk Mail Addresesd to "Current Resident" (Mr. Resident don't live here no more and he can go fuck himself anyway)

* Alumni Horseshit

* Fabric Store Circulars (if I throw these away before Mrs. Apron gets to see them, I risk falling asleep as a little red laser light finds its way between my eyes)

* "Come Pray With Us" ads for local churches

* Catalogs (I hang onto the Vicky's Secret ones for nostalgia)

* Coupons

They say you don't start caring about coupons until you have at least two children. I don't know if there's any hope for me. I lack the attention-to-detail, the patience, the energy and the overall competency to deal with coupons. They require a complex skill set that I just do not possess, and I hardly think that facilitating the squirting out of two kids is going to annoint me with that skill-set that includes the ability to assimilate the knowledge of what goods go with what supermarket/drug store, what goods we are in need of and/or are projected to need prior to the expiration date of the coupon, a reliable place to store the coupons, the ability to utilize scissors without risking a puncture wound, the cognitive ability to remember that one has a coupon for a particular item, go obtain the coupon, place the coupon in a pocket, bring the coupon into the store, select the correct item that corresponds to the coupon in your pocket, and pulling the coupon out of the pocket and presenting it to the cashier while at the check-out lane.

You practically have to be Baruch Spinoza to be able to accomplish that feat. Or at least Ron Jeremy.

It took my father three children, and then about twenty-five more years, to become utterly enamored with coupons. I don't know exactly how it happened, but, one day, I came home and washed my hands in the kitchen sink (some mothers go absolutely bananafuck when you do that) and I happened to glance at the little shelf above their sink-- littered with coupons. It looked like a newspaper supplement had exploded in the kitchen. Coupons for Tylenol Gel-Caps and Vitamin-E and V-8 Juice and grapes and Lemon Joy. It was amazing. They were categorized and piled according to their corresponding retail establishment. It was disturbing.

Sometimes, my father will call me on the phone, like a stockbroker with a hot tip too good to pass up.

"Mummy-- do you eat at Applebees? There is coupon here-- $5.00 off a whole meal!"

A pointed, offended silence inevitably follows before I say something like,

"I am going to hang up the phone now before someone gets hurt."

I don't mean to be insensitive. I know he's just a man who loves his son, and loves his coupons, and wants the two to commune in festive, Jewish, money savingness on common ground. But, at Applebees, ne'er the two shall meet.

My wife enjoys eyeballing the coupon circulars that come to our house and, on the days when she gets home from work before me, she is able to do so. Otherwise, the circulars are shoved into the recycling bin. I know-- it's like throwing away money. But, on Sunday, on our way back from a brief sojourn to Pittsburgh, Mrs. Apron and I got into a huge fight that was precipitated by the existence of a seemingly innocuous McDonald's coupon at her sister's apartment. See? It is possible for coupons to visit upon us untold amounts of unhappiness.

Unless, of course, they're coupons like THIS ONE:


Behold: the healing power of the Copper Magnetic Jesus Bracelet. Thing.

The mere existence of an item like this, you would think, would be enough for me to abandon my reckless, everything-must-go-in-the-bin mentality, but we know I don't change so easily. Not even Jesus with his supercool magnets and wristwear can change me.

Try as he might.

I must say, for $9.97*, (*plus shipping & handling from Heaven) you're getting quite a sweet deal. You get the healing power of Jesus, the penetrating power of magnets, and the soothing power of copper.

That's a lot of power for the money-- and a lot of different kinds of power, too!-- though I'm not sure the average Christian will very much fancy seeing the words "Jesus" and "penetrating" so close together.

I have to confess-- I did, mostly for your edification (I hope you're happy) visit http://www.dreamproductscatalog.com/ to see what other Jesus-related offerings they had to peddle. I admit I was very surprised by what I found on this site.

While I didn't go poking around on the website too too much, the homepage has some of their "Favorite Products." Whose favorites they are and what these people eat out of which garbage cans, I couldn't say for sure, but some of the Favorite Products were:

Cardigan Slipper Socks (only $12.97)

Talking Teaching Teddy (not to be confused with Teddy Ruxpin or Alan Greenspan)

Zip-Up Security I.D. Case (looks suspiciously like "a wallet")

and, my favorite,

The Sleep Bra

"Our Sleep Bra is the most comfortable bra on the planet. It shapes, lifts and supports in a way no other bra can. Its silky, soft fabric stretches to fit any cup size from A to DD, AND it conforms to changes in your body maintaining a perfect fit any time of the month. So comfortable you can even sleep in it. Fashion nylon/spandex import. Available in even sizes 34 through 52."

Knowing that breasts change as the weeks go by in a given month is something that I find funny, which just reinforces the fact that I am emotionally twelve years old. I would also like to go on record by saying how disappointed I was that the aforementioned products on this website had nothing, apparently, to do with Jesus. I would probably pay a hell of a lot more than $9.97 for a Jesus Copper Magnetic Sleep Bra.

Dream Products: take note.

Kyeeu-pons

My father is obsessed with coupons.

I don't know if they had them in Israel at the time he was growing up-- probably not. And he didn't seem to care about them back in the eighties and nineties, when we dined as a family at restaurants that served lobster and featured large, dead animals on the walls. No, my father's love affair with coupons began maybe three or four years ago.

He calls them "kyeeu-pons." And, if you make fun of either his infatuation or pronounciation, you will die.

Back when I was younger, somebody else was obsessed with the coupon circulars that would arrive at our house on Sunday mornings-- but he didn't live there. Dr. Porter, our elderly neighbor, would waddle over to our house in his wife-beater, torn cargo pants and Depression-era Florsheims with gaping holes in them. He would enter our home, unannounced, and nonchalantly walk into our dining room while our family would be having breakfast, while my sister and I were reading the comics over our bowls of Frosted Mini-Wheats. Dr. Porter was a saggy, very short man who waddled instead of walking. Half of his right thumb was missing, his ears stuck out like a vole's, and his black glasses had lenses that were cut from pilgrim-era church windows.

"Howdy, Sport!" he'd announce, to nobody in particular. He would proceed to ransack our newspaper for the coupons and, with a wave, he'd leave. Nobody ever seemed to find this routine the least bit peculiar.

Dr. Porter is long gone, and it's a good thing because, if he tried that shit today, my father would have exploded him with a home-made booby-trap at the front door. Nobody gets in the way of my father and his beloved kyeeu-pons.

They are all neatly arranged and categorized on a shelf above the kitchen sink at my parent's house. There's a little pile for pharma-related discounts, another for food and toiletry products, and yet another for restaurants. When my wife and I are over for a weekend dinner, my father routinely tries to pawn these off on me.

"Mummy," he'll say to me in a low, conspiratorial tone, "you like Ruby Tuesday?"

"No."

"I have buy one, get one. Dinner. Take it."

"No. I don't want it."

"Come on, you take your wife out--"

"Dad. That's enough."

My wife is a vegetarian. There is nothing for her to eat at Ruby Tuesdays besides mozzarella sticks and napkins. Besides, I don't care for the atmosphere. I'd sooner take her to dinner at the city morgue.

Nevertheless, my father still tries.

"Mummy-- you like Fridays? Free appetizers."

The food coupons he tries to pass off on us are no less absurd.

"Sveetie," he'll say, "you eat... uh... Reeetz crackers?"

"You like Eggo?"

"How about Nastle Qvuick?"

His accent just makes the offerings that much more funny and disturbing. Tonight, we're going to a party for my sister and her new husband, and, last night, he read the menu aloud to us.

"Siddur plunk chicken" was my personal favorite. It's better than it sounds, right?

This obsession, though, with coupons has not, I don't think filtered down to me. Maybe the gene is recessive and delayed. I could maybe develop it at anytime, maybe when I'm 57 or thereabouts. Today, my wife and I were in Rite Aid getting electric razor fluid (I have a fancy-schmanzy Braun Nazi shaver) and there was a coupon for a $5.00 rebate.

"You're going to get that rebate," my wife said to me, in that quaint, no nonsense way of hers. I sighed and rolled my eyes, indicating that I am one of those people who thinks the work and effort required to get five dollars is excessive-- forgetting, of course, that $5.00 was essentially my wage for 1/2-an-hour's work as an EMT.

"Sure," I said.

As I went online registering for an online Rite Aid account and putting all of my personal data in there, recording the transaction and register and store number and purchase date into the little form, I felt like I was taking that one step closer to becoming my father.

Except that he'd have no idea what to do with an online kyeeu-pon.