Had Dazzle Will Disappoint

Once upon a time, somehow, we husbands dazzled our wives. Every day we hope to somehow reach into our worn out dazzle satchel and do it again. Every year and every day and and every hour of that day of that year it becomes more and more diffiicult to dazzle. They don't even want to be dazzled. It's macho, sexist bullshit we have learned. Now, we just try to decrease their level of disappointment. 

A week ago, I started off my day with a pitiful display of clumsiness that disappointed me as well as Lynn. She asked for my help on a seemingly simple task. I couldn't deliver. She was fastening a necklace and needed my help to clasp it in the back.

I've had trouble with this assigment before so I didn't have a lot of confidence. As I grasped the clasp, I immediately realized that my fingernails were useless and my hands had grown to the size of Andre Rousimoff's paw with enormous, insensitve frankfurter fingers.

I could barely see the opening in which the clasp fit. My eyes began to water. My cataracts grew back. My thumb was way too huge to pull back the microscopic mechanism that would fit into the invisible opening. In contrast, Lynn's neck never looked more shapely and the necklace more delicate.

You can do this...you can do this.

Five hapless hours passed disguised as five minutes.

I imagined Cary Grant in this situation.

Didn't help.

Then I imagined Cary Grant wearing boxing gloves

Close but no cigar

the boxing gloves yeah

Cary Grant no.

Then I visualized Roberto Duran with his hands of stone inside boxing gloves and wrapped in tape .

After the fumbling five minutes, I gave up.

No Mas.

I can't do it, Lynn.

Another short circuited dazzle turned to disappointment.

She excused me; "I'll get it."

I went into the living room, sat on my big fat stupid ass and put on a preposterous, perplexed pout. 

Eventually, Lynn came out of the room, looking good and ready to go.

The necklace was in place.

Nobody said nothing.

We got into the car and drove to the mall. All the way to the mall, I kept trying to figure out how the hell Lynn was able to put on the necklace herself. The goddamned thing was behind her. She deifinitely couldn't see what she was doing. Yet, there it was.

We were headed, ironically, to a mall, to a jewelry store in the mall, to a jewelry store in the mall in which there had been three shootings in the past month. I would think that a jewelry store in a mall that had three shootings in the past three weeks was not the safest place to work. We went to the jewelry store in the mall to pick up Lynn's diamond ring which was being cleaned.

The jewelry store employee who helped us out seemed to know what she was doing although she confessed that she was aware of the turmoil in the mall and the shops that had been evacuating since the last shooting.

While we were waiting, I noticed her name tag. Her last name was Stoneburner. I asked "really" she answered "Really!"

Since Ms. Stoneburner was in the jewelry business, I asked he why the hell did they make the clasps on necklaces so impossible to attach.

Stoneburner looked at me with clear understanding.

She pointed to the necklace she was wearing.

"It took me 15 minutes to get this thing on this morning and as soon as I got here it came loose and I've just spen the last 10 minutes trying to get it back on."

Fifteen minutes not once but twice in one day. Hands behind head working blind in a task that yields no progress. It's either clasped or it ain't.

How do they do it. How do they keep the composure.

I spent five minutes and gave up in frazzled desperation.

I took a more appreciative look at Stoneburner's necklace and at Lynn's.

I started to notice how many women wear necklaces.

No wonder we can't dazzle 'em.

I don't know if Stoneburner was married or not but I figured that a Cary Grant without boxing gloves might be able to dazzle her for awhile until she either stopped wearing necklaces or left the same one on all the time.