Don't get me wrong. I don't want Hick to be a GOOD sneak thief! I'm glad he leaves evidence of his ineptitude. He's not even actually thieving. But I DO expect him to get something out of my purse without leaving it like an F6 tornado roared through my handbag.
Hick needed a check to pay for tax and license on his new used duckbill dovetail trailer. Normally, he informs me the night before such a taxing trip, and I lay out a check. PUH-LEASE! Surely you didn't think Hick has access to the checkbook on a daily basis!
Anyhoo...this was a spur-of-the-moment errand. I guess Hick got up at the crack of 7:00 a.m., saw that he didn't wake me by jouncing on the edge of the bed (tossing me in the air as if I was a jolly good fellow) while putting on socks and pants and yanking the rawhide ties on his work boots. So he stopped by the Bank of Val on his way out the kitchen door, for a blank check.
His actions were quite noticeable. Imagine yourself the curator of a hoity-toity art museum, like the LOOVER, heh heh, in France, making your daily rounds before opening. As you walk by the Mona Lisa, you notice that her smile is a little different. In fact, her skin has taken on a yellow pallor, her head is now round as a balloon, her eyes black dots, and her lips a single curved line.
Not that my purse is a work of art. It's about 20 years old, with cracked handle straps. There's a place for everything, with everything in its place. Lots of everything. The checkbook itself is like a long canvas wallet, with slots for credit cards, zippered pockets for currency or coin, and sections to insert a book of checks and their register. When there's a new, thick book of checks, my checkbook is as stuffed as George Costanza's wallet. For two weeks, I haven't snapped the cover closed, so as not to bend the check register. Just a couple days ago, the checks had thinned enough so that I could close the snap.
Hick is not as gentle as I.
My checkbook was crammed down in the center section of my purse, where it belongs. But it was upside down and backwards, which makes the little decorative buckle catch on an inner zippered pocket inside the purse. The thin Zebra ink pen was sticking out the wrong end of the checkbook, catching on my mini bottle of hand sanitizer (don't tell anyone I have it!). Crammed in tighter than Darling Clementine's number nine feet in a size four shoe. And inside, the checkbook register was folded over at the edge.
Hick had even DARED to write in the checkbook register. As you might imagine, his handwriting is not up to my standards! AND he'd written in the check number as large as the section number in a stadium, leaving me no room to denote a circled T for taxes beside it.
Of course I had to bring this to Hick's attention, during our evening session I call "This Is the Time of Day When We Talk About the Most Recent Things You've Done Wrong."
"You know what this is about, right?"
"Heh, heh. I'm sure there's something. You tell me."
"About the checkbook."
"Oh lordy. Here we go..."
When I was done, Hick smiled.
"Okay. I DID have trouble fastening it and putting the checkbook back in your purse. I though you were going to yell at me for tearing TWO checks by accident... I stopped just in time."
!!!
My attention to detail has been dulled during Stay-At-Home-Down.
You must keep that man of yours shaking in his boots. Do you waggle your index finger in his face, too? LOL
ReplyDeleteSadly, Hick is NOT shaking in his boots! Even my teacher stinkeye doesn't work on him! He thinks every complaint is a joke. I do not waggle my finger in his face, because I value my finger.
DeleteI may be a jerk, but I do no to never try and find or take anything out of a woman's pocketbook.
ReplyDeleteThey make perforations on checks just deep enough to remove a check without tearing it only with a great deal of difficulty. I usually only ruin two or three in a book.
Such manners, for a guy who was ready to grab a complete stranger's butt!
DeleteThose checks ARE hard to tear out. Maybe Hick should put on a show at his Storage Unit Store, with him ripping a phone book in half. You remember phone books, don't you? Of course Hick would charge admission. People might just fall for it, once they're allowed to get out again...
Before River corrects me that should be Know.
DeleteLooks like you fixed it in time!
DeleteJoeh, I haven't used checks in years, but I still remember the way to tear them easily is to first fold them along the perforations making a sharp crease with a thumb nail, or a fingernail if that's the way you do things. I'll let the 'know' slide because you corrected yourself :)
DeleteThanks for the pass. LOL!
DeleteThe wife tells me to go into her purse and I dutifully bring it out to her and say you go in your purse. I learned many years ago that I never ever want to go through a woman's purse. There is stuff in those things that I don't want to know anything about!!! I have three sisters and we used to dump their purses out until one day my brothers and I did that and...well that was a story that doesn't need to be repeated.
ReplyDeleteThat's what HICK USUALLY DOES! Of course, when I don't tell him to get in there, THAT'S when he decides to rifle through my purse all willy-nilly.
DeleteThat's what you get for dumping out your sisters' purses! A case of PTSD all these years later!
I agree with Sioux's comment at the other blog. He did write in the register. So his handwriting isn't neat and tidy, but at least you know now where that check went.
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh! If Hick's Fan Club is going to sing his praises on a regular basis, I shall have to curtail episodes of my new series!
DeleteLet the record show that when I reconciled the checkbook register on May 1, I discovered a debit card transaction of $34.61, from APRIL 20, at MENARDS. I don't shop at MENARDS. So let's not start polishing Hick's Check Register Grammy just yet...