Marriage Counseling

You haven’t lived until you’ve had to shop for shampoo and conditioner in a foreign city where you don’t speak the language, especially when you think the survival of your marriage depends on success. This is my story. May it serve as a lesson to men everywhere.

My wife thinks I’m not assertive enough, and she’s right. I always tend to compromise rather than argue. My wife’s the opposite: She will go after anyone if she feels wronged. I’ve seen her go after men three times her size. I’ve seen her yell at police officers until I was certain they would simply arrest her. She’s marvelous to watch, right up until she turns back to me and gives me that withering glare that means, you’re the husband, you should be doing the yelling. But she’s so good at it!

So, we’re at the airport. Security is taking forever, and we’re all a bit testy. At the conveyor belt, the TSA confiscates my toiletry bag because it is, and I kid you not, one inch too long. One inch. I didn’t say anything, because I wanted to make our flight to Paris on time and didn’t want to irritate the TSA guys. My wife just shook her head in that way that clearly implies she would never have allowed such a thing, and then this comes back to haunt me when we get to the gate and realize it wasn’t my toiletry bag that got confiscated. It was hers.

I thought my wife was going to start glowing, she was so angry.

On the plane, she informed me that she didn’t wash her hair that morning, intending to do so before dinner once we got in to the City of Lights for our quickie vacation. This stated with the bitten-off chill of a woman who clearly thinks she could have married better. So, once installed in the hotel, I dashed out with my broken, largely incomprehensible French, and started to hunt down shampoo and conditioner. I didn’t locate some, but I am still unclear as to whether she considered this a success or not.

A little research after we got home led me to the two most beautiful things in the world: His and her clear carry-on bags for toiletries. They’re clearly marked HIS and HERS, so I’ll never casually allow hers to be confiscated again. If it’s HIS, I’ll just let it go. If it’s HERS, I’ll allow myself to be arrested and stripped searched before I let that bag out of my sight. They’re specifically designed to meet the TSA requirements (the 3-1-1 rule) and have a cosmetic case option too.

Now that we have these I don’t have to lie awake the night before a trip, sweating.