Tobe Frank: What happens when you don’t listen

To be frank I never listen to my missus when she’s giving directions to somewhere. I love her dearly but she can barely find her way to the ironing board let alone a pit stop on one of our weekend getaways.  She’s got plenty of sense but direction is not a sense she has.

Common sense on the hand…

The practicality of the woman has been the source of my undoing (and embarrassment) on many occasions.

The amount of times I’ve been trying some handiwork at home and heard the words “that’s not gonna work” or “why don’t you try…”  I grumble and groan or tell her exactly where to go (which is pointless because she couldn’t find her way there in any case!). But inevitably she is right and I alarmingly am wrong… yet again.  If only I’d cast aside my pride, my male ego, or god forbid my stupidity and listened to her.  I reckon I could have watched a whole season of AFL with the time I’ve wasted redoing things and probably could have gone to a few Grand Finals in Melbourne too with the money I’d have saved.

Just last week we had the kitchen redone.  No problems I thought. I’ll just pull out the finishes schedule from the bathroom joinery we had done a few years earlier and colour match it to that.  “That’s not the right colour!” she said.  “We haven’t used that colour in years”, she said.  So I said “BS… here is it in black and white… this is what we gave the joiner last time.  It has to be it”.  She repeated, “it’s not the right colour… you want beige not black and white… dummy!” before setting off on her latest adventure with GPS in hand to find the washing line somewhere out in the vastness of our backyard.

Well, I don’t know what she’s smoking, but the colour is written here, right before my very eyes.  Couldn’t be clearer if I’d written it myself… which in fact I had.  Bugger this, I’m calling the joiner and getting the job done.  A few days ago, whilst we were away for the weekend, the joiner came in and installed the kitchen.  We came back quite late on Sunday night, glanced at the kitchen on our way through to the bedroom, said to ourselves that it looks great and went to bed.

Come morning and as per usual, I woke first and made my way to the kitchen for my first cuppa of the day only to be stopped in my tracks at the bedroom door.  FARK!  It’s the wrong colour.

I’ve got plenty of sense too, which of course would have been dollars if I’d listened to the missus and not had to spend them getting the kitchen recoloured.

I went out for a long walk.  I just couldn’t bear the inevitable “I told you so…” which of course she would have no trouble at all in finding her way to.

What have you or your partner done wrong when you haven’t listened to good advice? What is the source of your bickering?