You have a complaint for everything

It's 10:35am on Easter Sunday. We are due at my parents house at 10:30. Yep, we're late. No surprise there. I wish it were but apparently I lost 15 minutes of my life years ago and I can't get it back no matter how hard I try. By the way we're running around crazy you'd never know we only need to get two kids and a just-out-of-the-oven pie into the car. As I search the endless shoe pile for my missing left shoe in he comes. He, being my beloved. "I dropped the pie. I'm really sorry."

Instantly I want to scream but even I understand that it is only a stupid pie, not the end of the world. I'm just mad because we are late and I have nothing else to replace it with and no time to find an open store. Plus where the hell is my other shoe? But really we're talking about a pie here. Internally I beam with pride at my self control as I say, "No biggie. It could have happened to anyone." But could it?? You be the judge.

Upon getting outside to help with the mess. I am startled to find no pie splattered across the driveway. Holy crap, it must be in my car all over the seat. We are really going to be late now! I check the seat. No pie there. OK you've got me. Where is this dropped pie?

Out he comes with his chosen "pie-clean-up" implements - two spatulas (hello?? but whatever) and heads toward the trunk of all places. The trunk of the car, hmm? Now I'm intrigued.

Treading lightly so as not to shift the calmness-in-the-height-of-chaos-mood we got going on here, I find myself asking. "So what happened?"

"I was trying to put the pie in the trunk."

"Yeah?..." says I, trying for that interested though not judgmental tone. Come on, a pie in the trunk?? I still don't get it. In a million years would you ever think to put a pie in the trunk of a car. Wouldn't it slide all over the place? Wouldn't the soccer ball, mud-caked folding chairs, emergency roadside kit, dog leash and other assorted crap get in the pie? The ride is like 10 minutes. Why wouldn't you just hold it? As my eyes settle on the chocolate blob that used to be a pie, my head hurts from the overload of unasked curiosity questions.

I think he senses that I'm not fully on board with the first premise - "a pie in the trunk" - since I can hear an edge of defensiveness creep into his voice as the explanation continues. "I was doing EVERYTHING by myself, holding the pie in one hand and trying to empty the trunk into the garage with the other when the pie just slid out of the pie plate and right into the trunk. There was nothing I could do."

A mature adult would have just let that sit there with not another word said. Who cares what happened or why? So what if you wouldn't have put a pie in the trunk of a car ever. So what if running 15 minutes late already you wouldn't have decided to clean out the trunk of the car for a 9 inch pie; even if putting it in the trunk was a remotely logical choice in the first place. So what? We're just different people. OK now go have a happy Easter with your family and don't waste another minute on this trivia.

Who cares? I'll tell you who cares. I do. I don't know why but I care. I am obviously NOT a mature adult. Therefore out of my mouth slides, "Why would you put a pie in the trunk to begin with?" Come on people who does this?

To which I receive a snappish, "You have a complaint for everything. Don't you?"

In my defense I wasn't really complaining. Think of it more as a scientific inquiry. Will I ever fully comprehend how this black box - the male mind - that came standard on my model works?

Now ponder this: If a pie falls in the trunk of a car and there is no wife around to see it, does it still make a mess?