If You Give Your Wife A Compliment

If You Give Your Wife A Compliment In honor of the upcoming holiday of Purim which is a time for joy and levity, enjoy this parody on "If you Give a Mouse a Cookie.” This is in honor of all married couples. If you give your wife a compliment, she’ll probably want to have a conversation with you. So even though you’re a guy, and conversations with your friends go something like “Hey! Wassup?” “Not much.” “Great!” “Ok, bye!” you’ll sit down with her to have a conversation. She’ll ask you how your day was, and you’ll say “Good”. She’ll ask you what happened that day and you’ll say “Nothing”. She’ll be amazed that this is what you call a “conversation” because she spends a half hour on the phone with her sister when all she called for was to find out who has carpool. Thinking about her sister will remind her that she hasn’t spoken to her sister in (get this) 2 whole hours so (realizing her conversation with you is just about maxed out) she’ll call her sister on the phone. When she is talking to her sister they will discuss what to make for supper. After an hour-long conversation about a million things and with suppertime coming close she will still not have a good idea so she’ll ask you if you mind having noodles. You won’t be in the mood of noodles for the 3rd time this week, so you’ll tell her you are going to pick up something from the store for dinner. You’ll ask her if she wants anything to eat because you’d be happy to also buy for her and she’ll tell you, “No thanks! I’m fine! I’ll just have an egg, I’m not really hungry.” Because you are a guy, you’ll take her literally, and you will bring home a portion of Chinese food only for yourself. When you sit down to eat, she’ll pull up her chair right next to you and look longingly at your sesame chicken. You’ll offer her a piece but she’ll say no, she’s really not hungry. “Besides”, she’ll say, “I don’t even like Chinese food.” After a minute or two of watching you she’ll reach over and take “just one piece.” Soon it will be another piece. And another. This will continue until she eats most of your plate. When you will ask her why she did not ask you to pick up something for her, she will again tell you it’s because she isn’t really hungry (and by now she truly isn’t). She will thank you for giving her some (most) of your meal and she will tell you how glad she is that she found such an amazing husband like you. Saying the word “glad” will make her think of Glad garbage bags which will remind her that the garbage was not taken out so she’ll ask you to take out the garbage (apparently she does not know how to remove the bag from the can). When she walks with you to the garage to take out the garbage she’ll trip (yet again) over your shoes that you left right in front of the door to the garage and stub her toe. Wincing in pain, she will flip the light switch so that she no longer needs to trip on your stuff, but the light won’t turn on because the bulb is burned out (even though she asked you 3 weeks ago to change it). Realizing that there have been wars in history that have taken less time than the time it is taking to get the bulb replaced, she’ll raise her voice (only slightly and through clenched teeth while hopping up and down on her stubbed toe) and ask you to PLEASE change the light bulb. While you take out the garbage, your wife will go back inside to put on her shoe so that she doesn’t stub her toe over anything else you left lying around. When she goes to her closet to get her shoe she will realize that she doesn’t have enough shoes and NEEDS to buy more. You’ll look at a closet that has more shoes than Nordstrom Rack and sincerely ask, “What’s wrong with these?” Instead of a response, she will give you a look that says, “You poor soul. You SO don’t understand!” She will give up on trying to find a pair of shoes from the 35 pairs in her closet, and will remind you that your neighbor is making a simcha that night and that the two of you need to go and now she has NO CLUE what she is even going to wear on her feet. You ask her how long it will be till she is ready to leave and she says, “About 20 minutes.” You will go get ready and, after putting on a suit and tie, in ten minutes (max) you will be ready to walk out the door. A half hour later, you will go check on her and find her in the closet, no more ready than when you left her last, this time looking at all of the dresses hanging there, and with a frown on her face. You remember your conversation about the shoes, so you quickly turn around and decide to wait downstairs with a book. She will want to take a shower, but when she sees the shampoo you brought home, she will tell you it’s not worthy of washing your doormat with. She needed the shampoo that is “for partly oily hair that is occasionally dry when the weather is over 75 degrees but gets frizzy when it’s raining and has a full body” (whatever on earth that means) while you bought VO5 for 78 cents because it said “shampoo” on the bottle and who would spend extra money on shampoo anyways? About an hour-and-a-half later, when you have long given up hope of getting to the simcha in time for the reception (and of course you are famished because she ate most of your Chinese food), she will tell you she is ready to go. As you head towards the front door, she will give one last look in the mirror and do that funny thing all women do before they leave – a quick tug at her hair and a quick brush of the bangs so that NOW she looks perfect, only to have both motions quickly erased the moment she walks out the door and encounters the slightest breeze. You’ll get in the car and head to the simcha, and she’ll talk about getting new shoes and a new outfit and new everything else until, thankfully, you’ll arrive at the hall. She will insist that you are just both going in to say a quick mazel tov and that you should please hurry up because she does not want to stay longer, and that you will meet up in the lobby in ten minutes. You will go in and say mazel tov, make a quick l’chaim, grab a quick bite and say hi to a few friends. You won’t spend any more time because it has already been ten minutes, so you will head out to the lobby. After 15 minutes of waiting, you text your wife that you have been waiting and she tells you she just met her friend who she hasn’t seen in AGES and will be RIGHT OUT! Even though she last saw this friend a week before, you don’t argue, and you wait another half hour until she finally comes out. You will go home feeling hungry, worn out, and overall exhausted from a long day, but happy to be married to such a wonderful wife. As you fall into bed, barely able to keep your eyes open, you will want to end the day with a nice word to your wife. So, despite the differences and frustrations the two of you felt during the day, you will tell your wife how fortunate you are that G-d gave her to you and how absolutely wonderful she is. Feeling good about ending the day with a nice word to your dear spouse, you are ready to collapse from exhaustion and cannot wait to fall into a blissful sleep. You begin to drift off into a long-awaited slumber when your wife wakes you and tells you that she really appreciated your compliment, but now what she really wants…… is to have a conversation to go along with it! AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Shabbat Shalom, and happy upcoming Purim, Rabbi Yosef Koval