Just Moan

Some downfalls can be prevented.  It's too late for me now, but perhaps I can warn you.  Never ask my husband an innocent question.

The first night we met, Bill, who majored in agriculture, was fascinated by my reaction to the Jersey farmlands.  I'd been brought up in New York City, and for twenty-five years had considered such animals as the sheep and the cow mythological beasts.  I thought them akin, perhaps by descent, to the unicorn, another beast often pictured but never seen.  Not until I lost my way for the sixth time on the same Jersey road did I acknowledge the existence of farm animals.  Everywhere I looked I saw horses, cows, chickens, and sheep.  The one thing I couldn't find was my way home.

I was still an unbeliever about pigs, however.  The only ones I'd ever come across were boiling a cauldron to trap the wicked wolf.  It was this heresy that fascinated Bill.  "Tomorrow," he offered, "I'll show you some real pigs.  Till then have faith."

The next day we drove far into the cornfields.  The punctuating farm houses grew ever more secluded, but at last we found a small, fenced-in yard, close to the roadside.  There in a corner was a sow and her piglets, all far hairier than Walt Disney had led me to believe.  I stared, enraptured.  "So," I reflected, "bacon is NOT the cured leaf of the cellophane plant.  What next?"  That was a mistake‑-I had asked an innocent question.

"Well," drawled my future spouse, his face without expression, "now you've seen sheep farms, and cow farms, and, at last, a pig farm.  And over there, Ronnie," he waved toward a lot where rows of commercial vehicles stood parked, "over there, you see a truck farm."

I moaned.  City-bred children aren't entirely lacking in education, and I did indeed know the proper response.  For the victim of such humor isn't permitted to laugh: all he may do is moan.  The low sinister chuckles or the sadistic "yuk, yuk" is reserved for the perpetrator of the pun.  Failure of the victim to observe this nicety is a breach of etiquette so ignorant that it can only be compared to using the right fork on the wrong salad.

Bill was delighted with my savoir faire‑-never apparent in other matters‑-and I was determined to seek the only revenge I could: I decided to marry him.

But marriage has little effect on a punster.  We had a barbecue one day, and the youngest of our mixed broods, my son Bob, commented on the little globules of grease that shone on a roasting frankfurter.  "Poor thing," he said, "it's so hot on the coals.  Don't you feel sorry for it?"  An innocent question.  An error.

"Sorry for it?  Not at all," Bill replied, spearing the suffering hot dog with a fork.  "It's going to fulfill its roll in life."

Sometimes I wondered if Bill would fulfill his.  Although he'd studied animal husbandry (and many a moan could be made from that), he worked for Civil Service, and his agricultural ambitions seemed unlikely to be met.  Then, with three of our five children already in college, we decided on a smaller house and Bill saw his opportunity.  He insisted on buying two acres for the house site: he intended to use the land to grow Christmas trees. 

I was astounded.  We had two green thumbs between us, but both were on my hands.  "Why Christmas trees?" I wondered.  It was an innocent question and deserved to be answered.

"I pine to be a farmer," he explained.

After the mandatory moan, I pursued my questioning.  "But I thought farming was milking cows, or feeding chickens, or quilting bees.  What made you decide on growing pines?"

"Livestock," he pointed out logically, "requires a lot of care and attention‑-evergreens don't.  Believe me, it's a fir, fir, better thing I do..."

My moans interrupted him.

I designed the new house we wanted built, and in a moment of whimsy gave it the veddy, veddy British name of "Wildcroft."  My husband was not to be outdone: he designed an outbuilding.  It was to be used for storage, for selling trees, and for his heady collection of broken lamps, uncommunicative radios, and dark-eyed TV's, all of which he intends to fix someday.  (This is an old, sweet song whose refrain has been playing for the last ten years.)  I glanced at his blueprints for this repository.  "Shall I name it for you?" I asked innocently.  "Let's call it 'The Outhouse.'"

Bill shook his head in disgust.  "No," he advised me.  "I'm going to build it from the used lumber of Herb's old barn.  There can be only one name for it: 'Barn Yesterday.'"

But working out our future house and barn wasn't enough for us; we wanted to plan the landscaping of our property too.  Eventually we selected twin shrubs for either side of the driveway.  Our choice was a plant the gardening books call euonymus alatus compactus‑-everyone else calls it "burning bush."  I'm telling you this so that you won't ask my husband, in all innocence, what the shrub is.  For he has his response all ready.  With cold aloofness he's going to reply, "It prefers to remain euonymus."

Consider yourself warned.