You give me fever

Tonight, wife asks me to go the library to get a movie we can both watch.

‘You know what I like, honey,’ she says, ‘something English, anything with Colin Firth in it.’

Those words are ringing in my ear as I head out the door. Thirty minutes later, we are sitting down for movie night, Chinese food on our laps.

‘You are going to love this,’ I assure her.

‘I’ve never heard of a Colin Firth movie called “Fever Pitch” before,’ she says.

‘Yeah,’ I respond, ‘he must have made it just after “Pride and Prejudice”.’ That answer, pulled from thin air, sounds convincing enough to assuage any fears she might have.

Within 20 minutes, however, she’s marching out of the room, stopping only to fling the DVD box at me.

‘It’s a soccer movie!’ she roars. ‘I can’t believe you got a soccer movie for our date night!’

‘It’s exactly what you asked me to get,’ I protest in a calm voice designed to make her even more mad. ‘An English movie starring Colin Firth.’ I hold up the box as evidence to bolster my argument.

‘You really are a child,’ she shouts. ‘A big baby.’

‘I did exactly as you asked,’ I say.

‘It’s a soccer movie!!’

‘No, it’s not, it’s a romantic love story with some thematic elements about soccer!’

She has no comeback to that so I decide to add fuel to the fire.

‘Your problem is you are just addicted to shows with men in frilly shirts and English accents. Why don’t you go and watch “Downtown Abbey” on PBS. You’ve DVRed enough of them.’

‘It’s “Downton Abbey” actually.’

‘Whatever it’s called, it’s downright boring!' I shout.

No response to that. Just some banging and clattering in the kitchen. I turn up the volume so I can watch the rest of the quietly excellent “Fever Pitch”.