OK, this story is from long, long ago. I don't really remember when it happened, but I think it was before Wife and I were even married—back when we were just "dating". (This means I was living in her apartment and we were regularly fucking, but the whole thing hadn't been formalized yet by a ceremony.) Call it ... well, maybe early-to-mid 1984. All our big turmoil was still in the future. I was still baffled when things went wrong, instead of cynically resigned to it. But the interesting thing is that I'm telling you the story now, not to tell you anything about Wife but actually to talk about me.
What happened?
I remember we were visiting my grandfather. Also, my parents were both there. Maybe we were helping him sort through the immense stacks of useless clutter that he and my grnadmother had accumulated over something close to fifty years of marriage. But it wasn't a holiday, because nobody had done any advanced planning for meals.
In the middle of the afternoon, Father (my dad) realized that the refrigerator had basically no food in it, because my grandfather was very old and lived alone. So he went shopping only when he absolutely had to, and he shopped for one person with a small appetite. I don't know whether he had known in advance that we were coming out to see him, but in any event he hadn't bothered to lay in any supplies. My grnadfather never really thought about other people except when he was forced to, and for many decades he had been able to rely on my grandmother to do all that for him.
So Father realized we were all going to need something for dinner, and he began making a shopping list. (He also planned to do the cooking.) So he asked for suggestions.
What would we like for dinner?
Someone made a suggestion, and he wrote down the ingredients.
How about a salad? Would everyone like a salad too?
Sure, that sounds great.
At this point, Wife—who of course was just a Girlfriend back then, but you all know her as Wife—said, "Pretty much any kind would be fine, except please don't get romaine lettuce. I hate romaine lettuce."
My heart sank. Maybe it's too grandiose or self-important to say that I had a premonition of what was going to happen. But at some level that's exactly what I had. From that moment, I knew the whole evening was going to turn out badly.
And I say that because of course—maybe this doesn't sound like an "of-course" situation to you, but to me it was absolutely predictable!—when Father got back from the store we discovered that he had bought romaine lettuce for our salad!
So the arguing began.
Wife: Why did you buy romaine lettuce when that's the one and only kind of lettuce I told you I don't like?
Father: Well why the hell do you have to be so fussy?
Wife: But you asked for suggestions! Nobody expressed any different preferences, besides me! So why would you buy this? It wasn't to satisfy anyone else's preferences, because nobody else expressed any. Is this just a deliberate slap in the face because you hate me?
Father: My God, you think the world revolves around you! Jesus H. Christ, I bought what I bought. Leave me alone and don't give me so much shit over it. If you don't want to eat any salad, you don't have to!