MARY
How about some humor from me for a change?
In 1990 at the tender age of 25 I met and started dating a very nice classy lady named Mary, who was 14 years older then me. Mary was 39 years old and had been though 2 marriages.
At first everything between us was great. But soon her natural distrust towards men began to surface and she began to push me away. (It also didn't help when Mark went on a date with her oldest daughter. To be honest it kinda of crept me out that I was in a potential situtation where Mark might one day be a son-in-law.) It seemed all the crap that ex-husbands and boyfriends did were being laid at my feet. I felt it was very unfair.
Looking back on it it's plain my relationship with Mary was doomed to fail. Unfortunately being in the middle of it back then I had no such clarity. So when the time came when I should have walked away from it I didn't. Mary and I dated almost two years, a good year after we should have called it quits.
When the relationship ended I was working at a furniture store as a salesmen. For that Christmas I wanted to buy her a sofa.
Now let me speak of this sofa for a moment.
If GOD were a sofa he would have been this sofa. This was the most comfortable relaxing sofa I had ever set on. My number one selling item in the furniture store was this sofa. I pushed it like it was a drug. One day when Mary came back from running a triatholan she came to my store and set in the sofa and promptly fell asleep.
So for Christmas I knew I had to get the sofa for her. I saved up (Not so much as you might think. For working there I got all my stuff at cost. This was about a third of retail.) every dime I could.
Three days before Christmas I gave her the sofa as a gift. Two days before Christmas she dumped me. (Saved her a gift.)
I was devastated. I was heartbroken. My dreams were shattered.
I would never get to sit on that sofa.
Mary called me up after Christmas and asked if I had gotten the sofa Soil Shielded. (This normally cost an extra 50 dollars.) I hadn't yet, but since I'm a good person and had promised her I would, I said I would come over and do it. I asked for a time when she wouldn't be there. I wanted to avoid any unpleasant confrontations.
So the next day at 3 when Mary and her entire family was at her parents I came over with the big ten gallon sprayer we had of industrial strength Soil Shielder. In no time at all I had completely covered the GOD Sofa.
Now this is why a person who knew me probably would have made sure someone stayed there to watch me.
I noticed on the carpet a recent stain that was there. I pointed my sprayer at it and sprayed. I made sure that I sprayed enough shield on it that a fire wouldn't damage it. I went around and did the same to any other stain in the carpet. I even made a few kool-aid stains of my own and shielded them in.
Having plenty of SOIL SHIELD left I wandered down to her basement and sprayed all of her dirty clothes. Inside and out. I looked at my canister. hmmmm. Barely dented it. I walked up to her bedroom. There I sprayed all of her clean clothes. And bed sheets. And towels.
Every piece of fabric and linen and clothes that I could find that belonged to Mary I sprayed. When I left my ten gallon canister was empty.
It was only years later that I heard stories of water beading off of clothes taken out of the washer, or then running the rug cleaner over one spot in a failed effort to get rid of stains. Her son told me about one time he was walking in the rain and the rainwater just beaded off his pants.
My reply was,"Why were you wearing your Mom's pants?"
It seems in my haste I shielded clothes belonging to people other then Mary. To those of you I did that to I apologize.
What upset me the most was that when I heard all the stories later on, not one person in her family had the wit to suspect me. It seems that like most artists I want credit for my work.
I guarantee that most people who know me would have suspected me right away. Hell whenever odd things happen to people who know me the first thing they do is find out where I'm at.
The moral of the story? Clothes that have been 100% soil shielded have a lesser life span then normal.
Who would have thought?