Cowboy suffers from male-pattern refrigerator blindness. This is a serious condition only diagnosable with acute observation of the male species.
A typical scenario goes like this: I’m lying on the couch, trying to read the Sunday Times while Cowboy makes himself a turkey sandwich.
“Honey, . . . ummm . . . I think we’re out of mayo.”
“No, we’re not, I just bought some yesterday.”
“I’ve looked everywhere. It’s not here.”
“Look on the door.”
Lots of shuffling, a jar of jam falls to the floor and breaks, a grumbled “fuck,” and then some swishing around with the broom, some Citra Solv spray, paper towels, then, frantically, “There’s no goddamn mayo in this fridge.”
I sigh. Loudly. I put down Sunday Styles which is, I might add, my one indulgence of the week. I get off the super comfy orange couch, out from under the perfect-weight white blanket that is a sure lure to my cat who loves to hunker down on me on the white blanket, move my cat, step over the sleeping dog and go to the fridge. The mayo, Hellman's always, is front and center. Maybe not on the door but on the top shelf, first row, middle.
“Think outside the box,” I say and hand it to him.
“Well . . . it wasn’t on the door like you said.” And then I hear some slamming and mumbling, and I know, of course, that I’m a mean mommy.
This is a syndrome. I suggest any of you doctors out there find a drug for this. It’s mostly the fridge, but sometimes it’s the vitamin basket:
I’m in bed with a headache and I need an Advil. “Honey, could you grab me an Advil?”
“Where are they, babe?” he asks as if he hasn't spent three to four nights a week here for the past two years.
“Where it always is — the basket on the herb shelf where all the other pill bottles are.”
Rustling. Rustling. Two minutes go by. Five. More rustling.
“Are you sure we have some?”
“Oh fuck it, I’ll goddamn get it myself.”
Or sometimes it's the bathroom.
“Honey, could you bring me that moisturizer on the sink?”
Crash, bang, “fuck,” boom. And he arrives, for reasons totally unclear to me, with a bottle of coconut oil.
Recently we went to see a play with family. My surrogate granddad was outside, somewhere, and needed to be told we were going to run a little late for a ride home. Cowboy said, “I’ll go get him.” There were lots of cars, I wasn’t sure he knew the right car, lots of people.
“Well, what if you can’t find him?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“Honey, you can’t even find anything in the refrigerator.” As Cowboy stalked off, a woman in her 70s next to me said, “Ah yes, the refrigerator. Now, that’s a lifelong challenge.”
