It was a beautiful, romantic evening; the food was good, the company was attractive and the wine was better than the two combined, which is all too often the case. Feeling particularly dizzy and satisfyingly warm ‘n’ fuzzy from our anniversary dinner, we bypassed the local supermarket on the way home, and picked up our dessert – four cones of cold, chocolatey slash honeycomb goodness, otherwise known as The Streets Cornetto (“no boring bits!”). I’ll give you the hot tip, that is a most accurate statement – everything is just that little bit more exciting in life when you have ice cream, chocolate and honeycomb all wrapped up into one little glorious cone of joy. As a woman, we appreciate such simple things in life a little bit more than men, which is why it took me 10 minutes to eat mine, and about 24 seconds for him to eat his. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to savour the taste, and in voicing my opinion, he agreed and smoothly inhaled another one of God’s gift to sweet treats. “Wonderful!” Thought I, “I’ll save that other one for dessert tomorrow! Hooray!”.
The next day, I begrudgingly got out of bed and toddled off to work. Part way through the morning, the reminder of the night before struck me and, “Yes! I will have me a wicked treat when I get home”. As sad as it sounds, yes, it was the idea of the honeycomb pieces buried in ice cream that pulled me through the day. (But what else was I supposed to do, I knew I wouldn’t be spending the evening with him, so I needed something!) The rain poured down for the rest of the day, and it was really miserable by the time I got home – perfect couch/ice cream/chick flick kind of weather. Into the trackies and hoodie I go, and then a beeline for the freezer (“Bugger it, if I’m only going to have it for dessert, why can’t I have it for dinner?”). But what is this? A bag of ice...frozen peas...a piece of fish...Mc Cain healthy choice chips (I should get endorsements for advertising here)...but no ice cream. “Oh no.” I thought – where had my lovely gone? Where was my little day saviour?! And why were there too many ice cream wrappers in the bin? “HEY! THERE’S NO CORNETTO IN MY FRIDGE!” “Oh yeah,” says he, “I ate it. And I ate most of these, too” and he held up my rice crackers. All four of them.
I felt like someone had stolen from me. Dangling something glorious in front of me – teasing me – and then going “guess what? It’s mine now!” and laughing in their evil deed as their greed overpowers them and they devour what was left of my soul. Yes, okay, a slight over dramatisation, but we all get the point. And if you don’t, then stop reading this because you are obviously a man.
On discussing this with one of my girlfriends, she so eloquently said “welcome to the long term relationship!” And it’s painfully true – they are the only ones in the world that can take from us, and we swoon. They take our icecream and our ricecrackers and we go ‘it’s okay, I love you’. They take our doonas and bed sheets and we cuddle up to them. They take our virginities and we insist on seeing them again. But it’s all part and parcel of the relationship gig, isn’t it? And I suppose that if they’re going to insist to take everything, than we must stay around to give them things – after all, what would they eat if not for our food? Where would they sleep if not for our beds? And we can’t have a world full of virgins after all, ladies – so we must always give that little bit more, and let them take. After all, that’s why we’re called the ‘better half’.
