A true story

This is a true story. It happened back around 1992. My wife and I had been married for six years and it was still just the two of us; we didn’t have any children yet.

Now my wife is a great cook. She’s so good, she can make sawdust taste good. But there’s one thing she cannot make — biscuits.

Her mother could make biscuits. Her mother made biscuits that rose a full three inches high and weighed just ounces. Unfortunately, my wife’s biscuits don’t rise so much. In fact, they’re so thin, you can’t cut them in half. You have to use two to make a ham biscuit sandwich. And they weigh nearly a pound a piece. So my wife relies on ‘whump’ biscuits. She just pops open a roll and cooks ’em right up.

If you don’t know, ‘whump’ biscuits come ten to a roll. But we rarely ate more than two or three each at most. Between four and six are just thrown away. So one day, I noticed in the grocery store that ‘whump’ biscuits come in five-packs as well! Well, there’s a budget blessing if ever I saw one. I told her that if she bought the five-packs, we would not have to throw out the extra biscuits that came in a ten-count can, and we would save money. I am so smart!! I bought a couple of cans.

That very night, she made biscuits.

I heard her ‘whump’ open a can of biscuits. Then I heard something disturbing: I thought I heard her whump open another can. “What is she doing?’ I asked myself. But I refrained from entering the ‘Forbidden Zone.’ (The kitchen is off-limits when she cooks). When she finally called me to set the table, I peeked in the oven. My greatest fear was realized – There were TEN biscuits in the oven. My mouth started running, not waiting for my brain to engage. “Why did you open two cans of biscuits?” I asked. “Are you stupid? We’ll only eat five and throw the rest away!” I yelled.

“I’ll teach you about throwing biscuits away!” she countered. Then she took the pan with ten biscuits and tossed it all out in the back yard.

“What are you doing?” I screamed, and I went to pick up the pan from out in the yard. To the side, I saw the neighbors were sitting on their back porch watching as things transpired. I grabbed the pan and headed back to the house. It took about two steps before I realized the pan was still close to 450 degrees hot. I dropped the pan, and kissed my burning fingers. Then to show the pan who was boss, I jumped up and down on it and stomped it till there was no life left in it. I glanced over at the neighbor’s porch. At some point, I don’t know when, they had slipped back into their house and shut the blinds. I left the hot pan and half-cooked biscuits sizzling in the grass and headed back to the house empty-handed.

One of us went to bed hungry that night. I’ll let you guess which one.