Twenty Questions My Wife Asks When I Say “I’m Just Running to the Hardware Store”

I love my wife. Let’s get that on the record before the lawyers get involved. She is smarter than me, better looking than me, and she can find anything in this house within nine seconds, which I find deeply suspicious.

But every Saturday, I say the same seven innocent words: “I’m just running to the hardware store.” And every Saturday, I get a deposition. I’ve started writing them down. Here they are, in roughly the order they’re fired at me.

The Opening Round

• “For what?” (A thing. A specific thing. I’ll know it when I see it.)
• “Didn’t you just go?” (Yes. And I’ll go again. That’s how hardware stores work. They’re like church for guys who can’t sing.)
• “How long will you be?” (Twenty minutes, said every man ever, while knowing in his soul it’ll be ninety.)
• “Do you have a list?” (I have a vision.)
• “Is it for the thing you started in June?” (No comment.)

The Financial Round

• “How much is this going to cost?” (Less than a plumber. That’s my answer to everything. It’s always less than a plumber, even when it’s absolutely more than a plumber.)
• “Do we not already own one?” (We probably do. But I can’t find it, and the cost of buying a new one is less than the cost of admitting I lost the first one.)
• “Are you going to buy another drill?” (A man can’t have too many drills. Each drill has a different personality.)
• “Why do we have four tape measures and none of them work?” (They work. They’re just in hiding. Like me, on Saturday.)

The Suspicious Round

• “Are you going by yourself?” (Yes. The hardware store is a sacred, solitary experience. Like a monk walking a mountain path, except the mountain is the fastener aisle and I’m the monk muttering “where the hell are the quarter-inch washers.”)
• “Are you meeting Dave?” (I might run into Dave. That’s different. That’s fate.)
• “Why are you wearing your good hat?” (A man represents his household in public.)
• “Are you going to get a hot dog from the cart out front?” (I’m not going to dignify that with a response. Yes.)

The Final Round

• “Can you pick up lightbulbs while you’re there?” (Absolutely. I’ll come home with the wrong ones. It’s tradition.)
• “Can you get the stuff for the bathroom?” (Which stuff? There’s so much stuff.)
• “Will you actually finish the project this weekend?” (The project will be finished when the project decides it’s finished. I am merely its humble servant.)
• “Do you need me to come with you?” (A question that’s actually a threat.)
• “Is this going to be like the deck?” (We agreed never to speak of the deck.)
• “Can you take the kids?” (Suddenly, the hardware store is closed.)
• “Do you even know what you’re getting?” (Honestly? No. But I’ll walk every aisle until it speaks to me.)

The aftermath

Ninety-five minutes later I come home with a bag of zip ties, a new utility knife, a hot dog-shaped stain on my shirt, and absolutely none of what I went for. She looks at the bag. She looks at me. I look at the bag. And then she says the twenty-first question, the one she always saves for last:

“Did you get the lightbulbs?”

Reader, I did not get the lightbulbs.

And that, gentlemen, is marriage. You lose the war every week, you go back every Saturday, and somehow you still feel like a king when you walk in the door with a bag of stuff nobody asked for. Love that woman. Never let her see the receipt.

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Sound off in the comments: What’s the most useless thing you’ve ever come home with from a “quick” hardware store run?