Don't sweat the small stuff

Practice goes a little long tonight so I have to rush from the field to the fancy restaurant where wife has dinner reservations. You’d think she’d appreciate the effort I made. You’d think wrong.

‘You haven’t even changed!’ she shout-whispers at me when I find her sitting alone in the middle of the crowded dining room.

‘Yes I have, I put on a fresh polo shirt,’ I respond.

‘You stink of man-sweat. You haven’t even showered.’

‘I do not stink,’ I say, doing the whole armpit-sniffing gesture as if to prove my case. ‘I sprayed some Axe on myself in the car.’

That’s still not enough to please her.

‘Look at your shorts,' she continues. 'You are still wearing the same shorts you went to practice in.’

‘The shorts are fine. There are lots of guys in here in shorts.’

‘Not athletic shorts and not ones with white paint stains down the side.’ I swear, sometimes with her it’s every little thing.

‘Well, the stains are because I’m the only guy in the room who made an unbelievable sliding tackle to save a certain goal in our scrimmage. It was last-ditch stuff! I slid right along the edge of the freshly-lined penalty box. Some refs might have called a foul but given that I was the ref, that was never going to happen.'

‘I don’t even want to eat now,’ she says, refusing to even acknowledge my story about the game.

‘I do. I’m starving. These practices are quite a work-out.’

The food turns out to be great and wife’s silence means I get to spend a lot of time thinking about tomorrow’s game. It’s a win-win.