Briefcase on the Kitchen Table

The other night Avery and I were sitting on the couch and I was flipping through channels on the tv. I stopped on a channel that seemed to be running an old movie. About a minute in to the movie, a very familiar face came across the screen; it was the Chairman from Iron Chef America (a show I enjoy). I could not figure out what he was doing in this old movie. Why was he not in Japan with his uncle, the Chairman and inventor of the original Iron Chef? Now, I am not a very gullible person but for some reason I actually believed that this man (who I now know to be actor Mark Dacascos) was from Japan and in the same family as the man who started the Iron Chef empire. I cannot explain why I beleived this; I think I just really wanted to believe it. I looked over at Avery and (in an apparently quite pathetic voice) I said, “Ave, why is the Chairman on tv?” Avery looked up at the face on the screen, then over at me. He took one look at my distraught face and started laughing. And I don’t mean a light chuckle, I mean a red-face-can’t-breathe kind of laughing. “Avery!” I said angrily; my little Iron Chef world had just come crashing down and here he was laughing! As he gasped for air he tried to ask, “Honey…. you actually thought… he was the… real chairman?” and I replied with a scowl. Then my second revelation of the last five minutes came; he was laughing at me; not with me, at me. And even more important, this probably will not be the last time; in fact I hope it is not. I was glad in the end that I was able to provide my husband a good laugh and that he wasn’t so concerned about hurting my feelings that he did not allow himself (or eventually me) to see the humor in the situation. That whole idea that your significant other should only laugh with you, not at you, is a crock. I think the best laughs may come out of the latter.