I still don't get it ...

The Bloggess' $100 revenge chicken-
Why exactly is this funny?

This story on the Bloggess has been making the rounds of my Facebook friends for the last few days.  Most of the comments were something along the line of "hysterically funny" or "this reminds me of something my husband did last week."  When a friend summed the story up as "I failed to communicate with my husband, and so I decided to plot revenge," one of his friends responded


First of all, they did communicate. She said, "We need new towels," and he said, "No, we don't." What's the solution there? If you've got one, please share, because I don't know a married couple who's found it. Do they need new towels, or not? Who decides? Is there a tie breaker vote someplace? Should we have the vice president or the lieutenant governor come down to provide it? Or maybe you think the "new towels" controversy serious enough for her to spend an hour explaining to him why he can't continue to dry his ass on the giant rag with holes in it the size of his ass that he's been using for that purpose for the last seven years, but trust me, if he don't already get that, an hour ain't gonna change it. Perhaps they should get a divorce, since clearly they have a fractured marriage fraught with dispute. (*tongue clearly in cheek, because look, anyone who HASN'T had an argument over buying new towels or something similar ain't really married, they're probably just living together in the same house and keeping separate checking accounts or something*) Here's the answer -- are you sitting comfortably? -- THERE ISN'T A SOLUTION. Like the other three hundred things most commonly fought about in marriage, there's no tie breaker vote, there's no "logical" answer (because, btw, there's no universal standard that determines the timeline for towel replacement), and both sides are probably pretty convinced of the rightness of their argument. At some time or another, just to break the tension, most couples resort to a giant metal chicken, metaphorically speaking. If you don't move that revenge vibe right to the surface, and quickly, it lies underneath, festers, and eventually throws your husband and his ratty towels (or your wife and her extravagant spending) right out of the house. Here endeth my rant on marital events.  


I agree with the friend who called revenge; I've never had this experience.  My husband and I have, over time, divided our life based on areas of core competency, and we trust each other to be adults and good stewards in those areas.  Towels are firmly in my area of competency, and if I say we need new ones, he agrees.  Likewise, if he says we need new fixtures for the bathroom, I agree.  Depending on the budget, we might not race out and get them this evening, but I would never dream of telling my husband that we don't need a new shower because the slight water leakage doesn't bother me and it works fine besides that.  I trust him to know what we need in that department.  If a new area comes up (and there will be many once the babies come), we discuss it together until it becomes apparent whose area of core competency it fits in to.  And no, they're not all as gender stereotypical as my example above - I do all the retirement savings and investing, for instance, and he does the pet care.

I certainly don't understand why spending $100 on a chicken shows her husband why she's competent to determine other maters of household expenditure.  Sounds to me like she just shot herself in the foot for $100.  Let's be honest - we all enjoy getting even, but it only works if the other person can't retaliate.  In marriage, you've got a lifetime of opportunities for retaliation, so getting even is pretty silly.  But maybe I just don't have a sense of humor - what do you think?