What the ….?! My husband yelled last Friday morning as I was reading the paper.

Jolted from my quiet, I rushed to find out what was wrong.

Dismayed, he whined,  “The water stopped,” as soapsuds slid down his body.

While I was dialing the water company I recalled that I hadn’t paid the last bill.  The lady on the phone confirmed this.  In defense I tried my own whining, sheepishly, to my husband. “If it’s okay for Sarah Palin to quit, I figured I could do it too,” I said in a huff after I told him what I’d done—or hadn’t done.  Incredulous, he stepped out and toweled off.

Recently I read that Sarah Palin was going to speak at the Reagan National Library because, the spokeswoman said, she, “embodies the values that we hold dear; faith, family, country first and service.”  I was outraged.  How does quitting on the people of Alaska put country or service first?  She made a commitment and she broke it.  She went back on her word.  She erased their trust.

I sent my opinion off in the cyber world to the woman who’d said it.  Later that day I got an e-mail back questioning where I’d read the statement.  The woman claimed she didn’t make it.  I looked back at the article and discovered my eyes had played tricks on me.  The woman I’d accused, the spokesperson for the Reagan National Library, didn’t say what I thought she had.   Someone else did.

I had to reply with an apology.  It was hard to do because I had my foot in my mouth and it got in the way of my typing but I pursued nonetheless stretching my arms around my leg.  It’s easy to be anonymous in the cyberworld but I figured I had a responsibility to follow through with what I started after I’d let my opinion be known.

My husband and I committed to each other that if he puts the money into our account, I pay the bills.  That’s our bargain.  We trust each other.  That exists because we take responsibility and follow through on our word.

I must confess the above story about my husband sudsing up but not watering down is a dramatization.  He didn’t have to walk around with sticky residue between his butt cheeks for days because I decided not to pay the bills.  But just imagine if I had.

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