A Good Finder

A couple years ago I found this film about dating and marriage produced by BYU in 1956 and I talked about it on Strangerville when I did the four-part series on old Mormon films. Well, I finally built up the stamina to recap it, with screenshots so you can see how exceptionally hot one of the protagonist's suitors was. 

You can read this real doozy of recap here. Also, shoutout to Josh Fowlke, our artist at The Beehive, who once again created the perfect piece of art for this recap. 

In other news, my husband, the man who vowed before God to love and worship and support and never criticize and always agree and suffer in silence for me, attacked me out of nowhere the other night. 

There's an ongoing debate in my home about whether or not I'm a bad "finder." Skylar includes "good finder" at the very top of his list of positive qualities he believes he possesses. This topic comes up every single day.

Skylar: Will you please hand me the cumin?

Eli: I don't see it.

Skylar: Did you move stuff around?

Eli: I don't have to because it's not here and that would be a waste of time.

Then he stomps over to the spice cabinet, moves exactly one thing, puts the jar of cumin right up to my face like people used to do to dogs when they peed in the house back before they got civil rights. 

"It's not that I'm bad at finding things," I tell him. "It's just that I don't really try."

This is a distinction with a significant difference, in my opinion. But Skylar disagrees.

"How is apathy and laziness better than inherent incompetence?" he'll yell. "Either way, you are not doing what I ask!"

It all came to a head on Tuesday, though. Tensions were high enough that morning when Skylar decided to cancel our evening plans. He has some time off this month and so I told him I thought we should schedule actual activities together, because I'm thoughtful and lovely and good at marriage. For Tuesday I suggested we make gingerbread cookies and listen to Christmas music and tell me how much we love me. 

He agreed to that plan but then on Tuesday morning he asked if we could reschedule it for a different evening. 

"Do you mind? Could we do that on Friday instead?" he yelled from the other room.

"Yeah, no problem," I said back to him, very reasonably.

Sky was quiet for a minute and then he shouted back to me, "is that really ok or is this a trap?"

Which, like, yeah it was a trap, but I really didn't appreciate his lack of trust.

Since he preempted it, I now cannot pull this out with ease later on during a fight when I plan to accuse him of "always changing our plans without even considering whether I'm ok with it!"

As it turned out, it was better anyway that we didn't have plans that evening because we were called in for emergency medical care. Matt texted us and said he had a cough and sore throat and until he could get results from a covid test he didn't think it was a good idea to go out to get cough syrup In These Unprecedented Times, so he asked us to drop some off on his doorstep.

Skylar drove. 

"I'll just pull up to the front of the gas station and you can run in and get it," he told me.

I didn't protest, because I support the concept of division of labor. 

Well, I walked into the gas station and Stranger, I could not see any cough syrup or medication of any kind so I walked myself back out to the car and told Skylar that.

He seemed a little surprised. "Do they not even have cough drops?" he said, as he put the car in reverse and started to back out of the parking spot.

"No. They don't even have gum in there," I told him.

Well this he did not want to hear.

He immediately and dramatically shifted the car back into drive and screeched into the parking spot once again.

"Eli Whittle McCann, you go back in there and look harder."

He said he was willing to accept that maybe they didn't have cough syrup but apparently when I represented that there wasn't even gum he no longer considered me a credible witness of the gas station's inventory.

I protested, telling him I already looked and I stood by my answer. 

"I'm going to go inside that gas station and I better not find any cough syrup in there!" he yelled at me. Me. Innocent little old me who was just trying to be a good person.

Then he stormed inside in his ridiculous sweater that somehow still looks good on him, and to be honest, yes, I was a little scared and suddenly not nearly as confident in my assessment that there was no cough syrup.

Then, not even 30 seconds later he came marching back out of the gas station holding in his arms an entire pharmacy's worth of cold medications. We didn't even need most of it. He just bought it all to prove a point.

"THIS WAS ON THE VERY FIRST ROW," he yelled it, as if the rows were numbered and this made any sense smh.

At this point I was commanded to go back into the gas station with him so he could show me "THE AISLE AT THE VERY FRONT OF THE DAMN STORE THAT HAS ENDLESS ROWS OF COLD MEDICINE."

"AND GUM!!!"

By the tone and volume of his voice, it was obvious he wasn't in a place to be reasonable anymore so I just did as he said and then we got into the store and the gas station attendant stared at us because what the hell was going on? 

I recorded a video of his absolutely absurd meltdown to preserve the record.

pic.twitter.com/VLIbFGIxh7

— Eli McCann (@EliMcCann) December 2, 2020

When we finally arrived at home he was still scolding me for the whole thing.

"You're making way too big a deal out this." I told him.

He ignored me. "Why didn't you at least ask the man who worked there if they had any? Why did you just walk out?"

"That's not the point," I snapped.

Skylar rolled his eyes and mumbled, as he walked out of the room, "I'd ask you what the point is, but I'm not sure you could find it."

P.S. every time Sky gets up from his study spot on the floor Duncan immediately takes over the heated blanket. Skylar is living with a lot of baggage right now.

~It Just Gets Stranger