It's A Guy Thing...



I may never full understand my hubby. I’ve been observing his behavior for fourteen years, noting tendencies, recording reactions, studying nuances.

 

My conclusion: he is different from me.

No, it did not take the full fourteen years to come to this conclusion. But it’s becoming clearer with each year.

 

Take yesterday, for example. I came home to find a lifetime supply of citrus sitting near the front door.

 

“Craving Vitamin C?” I asked with a smirk. He nodded, smiling. “And guess what? Those aren’t even 25-pound bags,” says he. “I weighed them. They’re each 38 pounds. I got all three bags for $20. We can give some to our neighbors.” I roll my eyes.

He’s brought home gigantic quantities of stuff before. Many times.

I’ve decided it’s just a guy thing, something I won’t fully understand—EVER--no matter how long I know him. If our ancestors were hunters and gatherers in the wild, Hubby’s tendency to hunt and conquer giant quantities of food is clearly a remnant from the predatory instincts of his ancestors.

When he goes to the local supermarket he comes back with humongous quantities of meat. I give him the look, because we’ve had this debate before. Many times. “Hubby. We do not need a month’s worth of chicken. I would prefer not to eat the same dinner every night for thirty days,” I explain. Again.

“But it was 75% off,” he says earnestly. “It was practically free!”

“Hubby. We discussed your game plan before you left for the store, remember? You were going to avoid the meat department. You weren’t even going to look in direction of the meat department. You were only going to get apples and milk,” I remind him.

“But…but…but…it was 75% off! I couldn’t not buy it,” he says with eyes wide.

And what can I do? I can’t argue with this logic because he and I will never see eye-to-eye on this matter. For him, walking away from such a deal is unfathomable. For me, it would be easy. Oh, sometimes I get something in bulk, and I’ll freeze portions of it. However, Hubby cooks the entirety of what he buys and expects that everyone in the house will be as happy as he is to eat chicken for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next week.

Oh, I love my hubby. His heart is in the right place. But I do have to tease him about the bulk thing. I’ve heard that other guys do this, too. My friend’s dad bought a 50-pound bag of white rice once, much to his wife’s distress.

So I roll my eyes, tease Hubby a little, and we continue to speak our own separate languages when it comes to grocery shopping. And tease him I will continue to do, as long as the cave man hunter in him continues to bring back food for fifty, when we only need food for five. Plus, he teases me constantly. The subject rotates but he’s a giant tease so I have no problem blogging about his hunting the oranges and dragging them back to our cave.

All this reminds me of a cartoon I loved watching as a child, The Flintstones. In the opening credits the Flintstones are at a drive-in restaurant and papa Fred orders the Brontosaurus ribs that are so big they tip the car over. I wonder if Hubby watched that show, too. Maybe that’s where he got his hunger for big quantities. Or maybe it really is something I’ll never understand but must somehow accept. Maybe it’s just a guy thing…