Chivalry is dead . . . at least in my home!

The other night I got myself into major hot water with the Mrs. In fact, in my 2 ½ years of marriage, I can only think of maybe one or two other times when I upset her as much. Thing is, usually when she is mad at me I can easily understand—typically she only gets mad when I do something stupid. But not this time. This happened to be one time when I thought I was doing the right thing—Think Again!

While crossing the street after a crowded athletic competition some punk kid yelled at us. More specifically he directed a crude remark toward my wife and the other woman who was walking next to us. When the woman turned and told him to shut up he responded by yelling “Fu.. you bitch, Fu.. both of you!” At this I turned and said “Are you kidding me?” Then he yelled more obscenities.

Because he was in a car waiting at a stop light I turned to walk toward the punk, but the car drove forward. Luckily for me they only moved about 15 yards and I was able to follow. When I approached the car the kid, probably 19 or 20 jumped out of the car and got in my face screaming all sorts of vulgarities about me and my wife. All I did was tell him to grow up.”

Look, I’m not some hard-ass tough guy looking to assert my manhood, but when someone says obscene things about my wife I believe I am well within my rights to confront them. Problem was I couldn’t tell just how old this kid was. He was significantly shorter than I, and not in any way tough looking, so I am confident I could have put him in his place fairly easily, but with the possibility of him being under 18, I didn’t want to risk it.

His friends forced him back into the car and I caught up with my wife. Except she didn’t want anything to do with me. For the next 5 minutes she screamed at me for being stupid, then she spent the next 45 minutes in silence.

Now I know, ‘tis better to let punk kids verbally defile what is most sacred to me then to have a backbone. I don’t know if my actions will change, but at least I know what I will be getting in trouble for.