Do I Love Her More Than Cherries?

“You ate yours,” she said, “now stay away from mine.”

She was talking about a bowl of cherries.

We bought a bag of tart cherries at The Big Box Store and I already wolfed down my half.

Then I ate half of what remained.

It is when my wife put her foot down – resulting in a bowl of cherries being left on the counter all week.

“Don’t even think about eating them,” she told me.

How could I not?

Every time I passed by, I was forced to wrestle with my conscience and all too many times my conscience lost and I filched a few. Now the few were adding up to a noticeable dent.

She said she was letting them ripen – but I don’t believe that. Granted the cherries were tart when we bought them but I know my wife and I suspect deeper motives.

She was testing me.

Love is never a constant. It ebbs and flows and from time to time we are compelled to take its measure. But this test was unfair. I love her a lot – but do I love her more than cherries? This I do not even know.

Some things we share.

  • Wine is always poured into two equal glasses.
  • Pie is divided by one and served by the other.
  • At the cash register whenever I buy a candy bar, I buy two. One for her and one for myself.

But sometimes it is hard to share.

I eat faster than she does. I can’t help it. I grew up in a large family where grab and gobble was a matter of survival. So when she is not feeling generous, she knows to either buy things that I do not like or hide them.

She once admitted to hiding Girl Scout cookies in a Kotex box.

Which brings us back to cherries.

This time she did not hide them. Instead, she left them on the counter, alone with me for a week while she went off to work.

So do I love her more than cherries? And what is love if it has never been put to the test?

Some questions should never be asked and never be answered, so I returned to the Big Box Store to buy a bag of ripe cherries which I emptied into a bowl on the counter next to hers.

“These are mine,” I told her when she got home, “and don’t even think about touching them.”

She glared at me for a few moments before asking the obvious, “Are you testing me?”

Author: Almost Iowa

www.almostiowa.com

68 thoughts on “Do I Love Her More Than Cherries?”

      1. Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’m sure getting a kick out of scrolling through your stuff. It was the title that brought me to you, since I’m from Iowa!

  3. This is hilarious… I do SO relate and have often declared something “not to be touched” to my husband who can eat more and quicker than I can on any given day. However, when it comes to cherries, oh how I love cherries, I can keep up with the best of em. And so yes, the perfect solution BUY more. But I like your style!!!

    I grew up in a household where my mother bought chocolates and then hid them, usually in her underwear drawer. Which is the only possible explanation that four teenagers were often found rumbling around their mothers bras and panties in the search of the elusive kit kat.

    Peta

  6. One cuts, the other chooses, could solve a lot of problems in this world. I had to come all the way to Texas to learn that one. Now, if I just could find a hiding place good enough that I can’t find what I’ve hidden.

    1. Texans are a wonderful, generous and courteous people. They have to be.

      As for hiding things from ourselves, there comes a tipping point where that occurs naturally – with just about everything.

      1. That’s great — unless you have a money-hider in your family. The number of hours I spent helping my mother find that twenty-dollar bill… Well, there were a lot of them. After her death, I figured out that I had to go through everything — even the pages of the books. It was worth it, believe me: especially as the total built up!

        1. I have a story that is the exact opposite. When I built a system for the Minneapolis Police, the city IT Department insisted that I use a laborious, make-work methodology to produce about thirty pounds of documentation for the system.

          I am not exaggerating, I weighed the documents.

          I knew that no one would ever read what I wrote, so just to confirm my suspicions I taped a $20 to the first page of the table of contents, along with a note. The note promised another $20 to anyone who found it. That was in late 1980’s.

          I am still waiting.

        2. Oh my. We had the same issue with my father who was a shoe salesman. He hid a few hundred dollar bills in the space between the shoe box lid and the open box nested in the lid. We left no lid unturned.

  8. Blame the ants. They ate a whole bowl of cherries, leaving the surface untouched, so all was well until someone foolishly touched… and the puddle dissolved, then started wriggling away. Yuk!

    1. Yikes! But that blaming the ants idea hasn’t worked since I blamed the ants for failing to change the oil in her car last January.

  9. First of all, please thank you wife for the idea of hiding food from my husband in a Kotex box! That’s pure genius. But as for sharing food, I like to think that’s not really a test of whether or not we love our spouses. Sometimes the food is just too darn tempting to resist, like the time I ate my husband’s baked potato because he didn’t wake up from his nap soon enough. In my defense, whenever we cut open a watermelon, my husband helps himself to the “heart (the center part where it’s the sweetest) so fast it makes my head spin!

    1. Eating a man’s baked potato is crossing the red line of death. My advice is to always keep a watermelon handy just in case temptation gets the better of you. 🙂

      1. Sadly, at the time we didn’t even have a dog I could blame it on. I think the fact that I’m still alive and kicking means it is true love.

        1. Here is how that would go down in our house:

          “You ate my potato!”
          “No, I didn’t.”
          “Who did?”
          “Scooter.”
          “How did Scooter unwrap the foil and deposit it in the recycling.”
          “Oh, I helped him with that. He asked real nice.”

    1. I can say that I do now that I have a big bowl of cherries backing me up….but who knows? Maybe she will test me with Cheetos next. THAT would be a test.

  17. “Whoa” on the transition from Kotex to cherries. Got a snort from this end of the blogging exchange!
    My hubby is learning – the hard way, after several shaming snarls that one doesn’t absently snarf down the entire container of snacks that were meant to see BOTH of us through the trip – especially not without asking if his darling wife would like some more.
    I, on the other hand, NEVER compare the volume of the soft-serve ice cream in the left-hand cone to the one in the right.

    1. “Whoa” on the transition from Kotex to cherries.

      Yikes, now that you mention it.

      Only “several” shaming snarls? He is a fast learner. My wife is still working on that one (as you can see).

  18. Ha ha ha. I love your solution! And that avoids the question/answer too. I also grew up in a grab and gobble household. I can eat Thanksgiving dinner in 5 minutes. 😀

  20. Peggy is beyond the Kotex box stage, and if you heard a loud Yahoo! that was probably her. Still, it’s a nefarious ploy if ever there was one. We do a pretty good job of sharing. Still, I got in trouble the other day for eating more than mine. Don’t even remember what it was, but I got the look worth a thousand words. Great story! –Curt

  24. “hiding Girl Scout Thin Mints in a Kotex box” Oh, that is so not fair! We share pretty well, unless she’s hiding things from me. Hmmm

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