Jackie Wells-Fauth
Right now, as I’m writing, I’m looking at the wall behind my computer and I am rather proud of it. There are two framed photos, a calendar (on the wrong month) two cardboard pieces with chalk drawings and the painting I made at a painting party many years ago.
I love looking at these things, but Roy avoids looking at this wall because it offends all of his sensibilities. It’s not that he minds the things I have on the wall (well, maybe he wishes the calendar was right), it’s the way I have hung them up. I like to say that my ability to decorate a wall with artwork or pictures is somewhat random, if you know what I mean.
Where Roy will measure and estimate and carefully string up a hanger on the back of the item, I prefer the thumbtack and sticky tape method. As for placement, well, I’m a little random there as well. It’s hurtful to the eye of a man who prefers precision in the hangings on his walls.
He came out of the bathroom after his morning shower one day rubbing his shoulder and holding a framed picture that I had just hung up the day before.
“Why did you take that picture down? I want it to hang over the shower,” I whined.
“Explain why we need a picture over the shower in the bathroom, where no one is likely to notice it?”
“It’s a beautiful picture of rain on flowers; perfect for the shower,” I said. “Now why did you take it down?”
“I didn’t take it down. Your perfect rainfall picture fell on me when I got out of the shower,” he explained, handing me the picture. “What did you hang it up with?”
“That little needle, right there,” I said, pointing to a tiny shard of metal on the wall above the shower.
He shook his head, walking away. “It’s too small to hold that picture and besides, it’s way off center.”
“Well, I’m hanging it back up, so just watch yourself when you come out of the shower,” I said, defiantly.
“Just the words a fella wants to hear concerning his own bathroom,” he was getting sarcastic. “Maybe none of my relatives will have to use the toilet when they are here.”
It’s always the same. What should we hang up and where should we hang it? It’s a question that can at least cause ripples in a marriage. While I am holding the picture up approximately where it should go on the wall, he is dragging out the tape measure and sorting through his supplies of nails to figure out which one goes.
After hanging a picture recently that required him to get up and down on a ladder, he said to me, “Is this hanging evenly?”
“Yes, it looks just fine,” I answered. “Don’t worry about it.”
It seems those are exactly the wrong words to say to him about pictures. He climbed down off the ladder, stepped back to look at the picture, got back on the ladder, adjusted it (he didn’t ask my opinion that time), got down, looked again and went up for one final tweak. I’m convinced the last one wasn’t necessary; he was just showing off.
I have several more things that I would like to hang up, but I am going to wait until this latest round of marital picture hanging has faded into memory. In other words, I’m just going to let it hang!
dropsinthewell 