My wife Sally has a new hobby. She’s into house plants.
A month ago there were two plants in our house. Today,
there are 3,106.
There are plants in the living room, plants in the
kitchen, plants in all four bedrooms, even plants in the
bathroom. Every table in the place holds at least six
plants; every windowsill boasts at least a dozen.
Greenhouses should have as many plants as our house
does.
There are two things I don’t like to shop for when I’m
with my wife. One is plants. The other is
greeting cards. I hate being with her when she’s trying
to pick out a greeting card because she insists on
reading every single verse. Out loud.
”How does this one sound?” she asks. “Roses are red,
violets blue, grizzly bears don’t wear tennis shoes, so
please get well soon.”
”Super,” I lie.
She’s also obsessed with finding cards that have the
birthday celebrator’s new age on them. Like “Happy 5th
birthday” or “Have a nice 21st birthday.”
When our son Bob turned 42, she found a card for every
age but 42. “For gosh sakes,” I finally said after what
seemed like 15 hours at the card display. “If you can’t
find one with a 42 on it, just grab a 20 and a 22 or a
30 and a 12 and let’s get the hell out of here!”
The point of this is Sally does the same thing when
she’s shopping for house plants. She can never decide
which one to buy. To make things worse, she tries to
get me to help her make a decision. “Do you like this
one or that one or the one waaaaay over there?” she
asks.
As near as I can tell, all three are ugly as all getout.
House plants tend to be ugly anyway, I think, because
many don’t have flowers. I’ve always believed a plant
without flowers is nothing more than a weed.
I guess I don’t care to have my house filled with plants
because, if memory serves me right, when I was a kid I
saw a horror movie in which this little old lady had
thousands of plants in her house and one day, for no
apparent reason whatsoever, they turned ugly and ate
her.
One day last week, Sally went to a garage sale and when
she got home she had several paper bags filled with
house plants. She was thrilled.
”The woman who had the sale gave these to me,” she
said. “Do you know that you aren’t supposed to say
‘thank you’ when someone gives you a house plant?”
“Why not?” I asked.
”Because if you say ‘thank you’ the plant will die
within three days,” she replied.
I spent the next two weeks going from room to room
saying “thank you, thank you, thank you” . . .
