Living Retired — ‘SMASH!’
Living Retired — ‘SMASH!’
By Gary Chalk
SMASH! There goes another one of our wine glasses.
These days Jan has become a one-woman wrecking machine. It seems whenever she washes our drinking glasses, or removes them from the dishwasher, she manages to break one. It is now to the point that it is our cupboards — not the glasses — that are half full.
SMASH!
Is Jan trying to break our glasses thinking I will excuse her from cleaning up after we eat? Is she hoping to go on a shopping trip to purchase new glassware? Maybe she thinks I will buy some for Christmas.
“Jan, you’re not trying to break our drinking glasses on purpose are you?”
She laughed. “I don’t know what is happening Gary. I seem to be breaking glasses every day.”
In the past few weeks wine glasses, martini glasses, and champagne flutes have all met their demise. A few of our juice and milk tumblers have ended up wrapped in newspaper and placed in the garbage pail. Drinking glasses have become so rare in our house that I gulp milk right out of the carton. Oh, I have always done that!
SMASH! This time a water glass falls to the kitchen floor and breaks into smithereens.
“Jan, you did it again! Broken glass is everywhere. Please tell me you are wearing shoes this time and not flip flops.” My comment cut to the chase…
“You know Gary you have been known to break glasses. Remember that time at my nephews wedding reception you stood up and proposed a toast — and smacked the groom’s glass so hard that it shattered! You came back to our table with red wine dripping all down the front of your tuxedo. That was embarrassing!”
“Or how about the time you decided to do a magic trick making a juice glass disappear before our granddaughter’s eyes — you shouted ‘ABRACADABRA!’ and snatched back the white linen tablecloth and sent the juice glass flying clear across the dining room! There were glass chards everywhere.”
“Jan, your memories about me breaking drinking glasses are shattering my self esteem.”
But Jan was on a roll…
“Gary, there was the time we were with Ruth and Rick in Myrtle Beach at the Waccamaw Pottery Outlet. I don’t know what got into you, but Rick and you began lobbing fragile wine glasses back and forth across the aisle to each to other! Why on earth would you do such a silly thing?”
I decided I too could dish it out, so I reminded Jan the time we were grocery shopping. She reached up high for a large two litre bottle of Pepsi. It slipped from her hands and smashed down in the aisle.
“Gary, you kept pushing the grocery cart along as if you didn’t know me.”
“Okay Jan, I get it; but don’t stop now.”
“Okay, I won’t. The worst was when my parents hosted a party when I went away to university. I opened your gift in front of everyone. It was two wine glasses for my dorm room — very thoughtful. But you wrapped them in a bright red thong! Did it never cross your mind what my mom would think?”
“Well, I certainly remember her choking on her champagne! But at least the glasses I got you did not break.”
Having so few drinking glasses, we now resort to the eclectic mishmash of coffee cups we have saved over the years. There is the McMaster University ‘Best Mother’ coffee cup, a gift to Jan when our son Tyler was a student. There is the London School of Economics mug Tyler gave us when he returned from studying in England. We helped pay for his undergraduate degree and his master’s degree — and he bought us two coffee mugs! Sense a trend?
For Christmas we are including drinking glasses on our wish list. Sorry, make that plastic tumblers.
