Poor, Sick, Long Suffering HoBiscuit

Yesterday, HoBiscuit was a little sick. Not very sick mind you, just a little sick. Since she was in my apartment her sickness became my responsibility and I did everything I could to help her feel better. As we were lying on the couch watching TV she asked me if I could please go get her some water because she was thirsty.

Of course I screwed it up. I’m a guy.

It sounds like a simple request, doesn’t it? When necessary, Wild monkeys in the jungles of East Africa have the necessary social skills to stop flinging their own poo at each other and bring food and water to their sick monkey friends, so it should have been a simple matter for me to get up off my perfectly healthy ass and pour my girlfriend a glass of water. I mean, the fridge was only a couple of feet away and it wasn’t like she was asking me to paint her toe nails or, god forbid, snuggle. Don’t get me wrong, snuggling is great when we’re both healthy, but if one of us is sick and sweaty and having respiratory problems it’s just not the same.

Frankly, it’s just yucky.

So, as I got up to get her water I realized that I still had a full glass of water sitting right there on the coffee table. For a moment, I just looked at it. A nearly full glass of cool refreshing water perched there, virtually untouched, just waiting to quench someone’s thirst. Suddenly, too little geeks appeared in my mind and had a little conversation that went something like this:

“Well, will you look at that. There’s a full glass of water right here.”

“I think she wants water from the fridge.”

“She didn’t say water from the fridge, did she?”

“Well, no. Technically she only asked for some water, but I’m sure she meant fresh water.”

“But this water is right here.”

“You’re going to get us in trouble.”

“Shut up and be a man. It’ll be fun.”

Let me tell you, the look HoBiscuit gave me as I artfully poured my room temperature, slightly used water into her glass was priceless. The look of incredulous astonishment will forevermore be etched in my mind as one of the times that I really ‘got’ her. Of course, she doesn’t see it that way. She thinks I was just being mean and lazy and was angry with me for a couple of hours. It wasn’t until much later on that she realized that I had done it as a joke and wasn’t trying to be deliberately mean. Of course, she thinks it’s funny now, but she’ll never let me live down the fact that I was mean and heartless in her time of need.

And I still think putting the ice cube in the glass afterwards was a stroke of genius.