When you Have a Bad Day or How to Describe How Elvis DIed on the Shitter

My husband kidnapped me from my bad day!

You have to admit, a man who does that while his wife is breathing fire, crying sideways, and throwing full Southern hissy fits because her dish ate her plate (still can't find it), she has writer's block, and her teenager sassed her. To do so, a man must be brave, stupid, or deeply committed to marriage. Probably all three.

So, what do you do when your wife has officially lost it? You feed her chocolate and Mountain Dew like she’s a raccoon sobbing behind a Waffle House dumpster.

“I really,” I sniffled into my soda, “am so upset… that I couldn’t write today.”

“I understand,” he said, hands folded like Dr. Freud, which only made me angrier.

“Who are you, Dr. Freud?”

He answered in German.

“I couldn’t even describe how Elvis died,” I added, spiraling now.

“All alone… on the shitter.”

He choked.

“Or maybe,” I offered, “he met his heavenly reward as the King of Rock ’n’ Roll on his celestial throne.”

He choked again.

“Do you realize how many names there are for the commode?” I rattled off, my brain spinning like a bingo machine on fire.

"Shitter

Crapper.

Throne.

Commode.

The John.

“

Anne—”

“No, not Anne, but I hear taking a shit on the shitter is called an Obama.”

By now, he was halfway out of the booth, laughing. The waitress appeared, horrified.

“What’s so amusing?” she asked.

"My wife!" he gasped. “This is why I married you. You can crack me up when you are so upset!"

I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was trying to survive the day.

“I once had an uncle who died on the shitter,” he said. “That crap killed him. Uncle Cecil.”

I laughed. I was supposed to be crying, but I laughed anyway.

“I had a cousin,” I said, warming up, “who was also my aunt, who died with her husband on top of her.

She screamed for two hours before the servants heard her. It took two men to do the job of one.”

Pause.

“She had a baby nine months later.”

“Cousin-aunt,” he nodded. “Kentucky kin.”

I rolled my eyes. Geography explains a lot.

By the time we got home, we were laughing so hard we could barely stand upright. Mrs. Clark peeked through her blinds and probably assumed two drunk idiots were trying to break into their own house.

Nothing about the day had improved. The worry was still there.

The child still needed attention. Life was still life.

But somehow, laughter made it survivable.

Sometimes the only thing that saves you is caffeine, chocolate, and realizing that if Elvis could die on the shitter and still be the King, then maybe, just maybe, you can survive anything.

We will be fine.

Because we are not right in the head, but we are still standing.