Men in the hardware store ... (while the woman is parked outside)
It's our wedding day. I have made a fuss and reserved a table. Finally a nice meal for two again? without any daily stress and childish screaming? splendid performance. "Let's go out five minutes earlier, I have to get something short," said my darling, before we left. Had I known WHERE he wanted to get something, I would never have agreed to it. I know my husband's relationship with hardware stores. And I should have known better. My sentence "Go there alone, I do not fancy a hardware store" was ultimately the culmination of stupidity. Because a man? at least mine? Sending it to a hardware store without surveillance is roughly equivalent to sending an unattended four-year-old with a golden credit card to Toys`R Us.
"You want to go to the BAUMARKT?", I ask and notice that I sound hysterical. "Now?", I croak in a sweeping voice and smoothen my short black, which I finally put on again to celebrate the day. "Just a screw," my husband growls and gives me a kiss before slamming the car door.
"That sparkle in the eyes ..."
Five minutes are over. I catch myself trying to peek through the glass windows at the cash register and laugh myself out. God, I am naive! Another five minutes go into the country. I calculate and come to the conclusion that a delay of a whopping 100 percent justifies being offended. In fact, I was the second since I realized that he really wants to go to the hardware store. On our wedding day! That's because I feel a certain kind of jealousy when my husband comes here. This shining in the eyes when he sees the shield. That's how he looked at me. The hardware store conjures this expression even after years in the face. I find it comforting that he does not care whether it's OBI, Toom or Hagebau. If it were a single store he loves so much, I would be seriously worried. Or should I?
"Diagnose chronic tree arctophilia"
I google if there is such a thing as amorous feelings for certain department stores. Learn that there is everything in love and you just have to hang on it -phile. Diagnose chronic Baumarktophilie and now be a little suspicious. Stop it now! That's impossible! I lock the door of the car behind me and sneak in. He is not at the screws. I find it open-mouthed in front of a screen on which a handyman with a monstrous device digs huge holes in the ground. Wars are scared. Our beautiful lawn! My husband strolls slowly through the corridors as if he's at a craft market in St. Tropez. He takes small saws, chains, spirit levels and huge wooden poles and lets them glide admirably through his hands. I do not know if I should laugh or cry. A quarter of an hour ago we should have set up in the restaurant. Instead, my husband, who has been married to me for exactly seven years, strolls like a man possessed through the departments of a hardware store. I admit to recognize certain parallels to me in the laundry department of my favorite department store. But not on the WEDDING DAY! While I'm sitting outside in the car. Or should sit. Or wanted. Oh, I know what.
"Because you wanted ..."
I choose the open confrontation. "Tell me, do you know that our car already has rust stains and I've aged ten years while you rumbing here?" I ask, looking at him angrily. He hugs me and looks startled. "Have I been in here a long time?" I moan. "An eternity!" My husband guiltily shrugs. "I just wanted the screw ...", he murmurs and shows me a millimeter of iron in his hand. "Because you wanted me to fix your bedside table, and then I saw this thing, which makes holes in hard ground, because you would love to have a bower in the garden, and I have to fix it, if it does And I've remembered that they have this beautiful fabric on offer from which I could make the foliage roof, so we can sit under it when it rains and ... "I shut my mouth and laugh.
"About our table at the Italians certainly someone was looking forward." The customer review has been automatically translated from German.
"You go to the hardware store because you think that makes me happy?" My husband shrugs. "Why else?" I do not know if he'll ever understand why I have to laugh like that. I do not believe it. But I understood a lot today. For example, a wedding day at the hardware store may be even more romantic than a chic Italian. "Let's buy the stuff," I tell my stunned man. Fifteen minutes later, we also load two sacks of concrete, four piles, many hooks and weird stuff that I do not know in the car.
It is really absurd.But do you know which wedding day has been the best? The one on which I stirred concrete in a black mini dress and built a bower with my sweetheart. Anybody was happy about our table at the Italian. But the pizza would never have been as tasty there as the pizza deliverer brought us under our home-made arbor at midnight, I think, as we both sit on the cold turf under the rain-soaked tarpaulin pulling hot cheese threads.
