The Question

"Hey, so, quick question—and I mean quick, like genuinely quick, not the kind of quick where I say quick but then it turns into this whole thing where I'm detailing the socioeconomic implications of like, I don't know, oat milk pricing structures at Whole Foods versus Trader Joe's, which—actually, have you noticed that Trader Joe's oat milk is legitimately half the price but somehow tastes worse? Like, objectively worse. I thought it would be one of those situations where your brain convinces you the expensive version is better because of psychological pricing bias or whatever, but no, the cheap one genuinely tastes like someone dissolved cardboard in tap water and added a single molecule of vanilla for legal purposes. Anyway. My question is—"

"What's your question?"

"Right. Yes. So the thing is, I was reorganizing the bathroom cabinet—not because I'm procrastinating on the Henderson report, that's finished, well, it's mostly finished, like eighty-seven percent finished which honestly in today's corporate landscape counts as completely finished because who has time for that last thirteen percent when there's always some new initiative about 'synergizing cross-functional deliverables' or whatever dystopian business-speak they're workshopping this quarter—but anyway, I was in the bathroom cabinet because I couldn't find the good tweezers, you know, the Tweezerman ones with the slanted edge that actually grab the hair instead of just pinching your skin like some medieval torture device rebranded as a beauty tool, and—"

"The question."

"I'm getting there, I'm establishing context, which is important because without context you're just going to give me that look, that specific look you do where your left eyebrow goes up approximately fifteen degrees and your mouth does that thing where it's technically neutral but somehow radiates judgment across three zip codes, and I don't want that look because this is a reasonable question once you understand the full—"

"Sarah."

"—the full situation, which involves not just the tweezers but also the fact that we're out of cotton rounds, the name-brand ones not the generic ones that disintegrate if you look at them wrong, and I know we have that auto-delivery subscription through Amazon which is itself a whole separate conversation about how we've all just accepted that Jeff Bezos gets to know our personal hygiene habits and predict our purchasing patterns with terrifying accuracy, like he's probably got an algorithm that knows I'm going to need more cotton rounds before I know I'm going to need more cotton rounds, which is both convenient and deeply unsettling in that late-capitalism-meets-surveillance-state kind of way that we all joke about but secretly keeps us up at 3 AM wondering if we've already lost the privacy wars and just haven't admitted it yet—"

"I'm going to count to three."

"—but the point is, while I was looking for the tweezers I found that thing, you know, that thing, the thing we bought at that boutique in Portland—no, not Portland Portland, the Maine one, not the Oregon one, because we were there for your cousin's wedding, the one where they served deconstructed tacos which is just a fancy way of saying they gave us ingredients and made us assemble our own dinner like we were on some kind of Michelin-starred episode of Blue's Clues, and honestly the audacity of charging people $150 a plate to do their own food assembly—"

"One."

"—but we went to that boutique the next morning, the one with the reclaimed barnwood shelving and the owner who definitely had opinions about essential oils that she was barely restraining herself from sharing, you could see it in her eyes, this desperate need to tell us about tea tree oil's antimicrobial properties or whatever, and we bought that thing, the little ceramic thing, I'm not saying what it is because I know you know what I'm talking about, you have to know, it was your idea to buy it in the first place even though I said—and I was right, for the record—I said we'd never actually use it and it would just become decorative clutter, which is exactly what happened—"

"Two."

"—and now I can't remember if we decided it was for the bathroom or the bedroom, because it could honestly work in either space depending on our organizational philosophy, which we've never actually discussed as a couple, like we've cohabitated for three years and somehow never established a unified theory of where small ceramic objects are supposed to live, and I feel like that's the kind of thing relationship books probably tell you to discuss early on, right up there with finances and whether you want kids and if you're a morning person, except no one tells you about the stuff, the gradual accumulation of objects that have no clear taxonomical home—"

"Three. What is your question?"

"Do you know where the scissors are?"

"...the scissors."

"Yeah. The kitchen scissors. The good ones."

"That's it? That's the question?"

"I mean, yes? Why, what did you think I was going to—"

"They're in the drawer. Second from the left. Where they always are."

"Oh. Right. Thanks."

"...are you okay?"

"Yeah, fine, why?"

"You just spent seven minutes not asking me where the scissors were."

"Well, when you put it like that it sounds unreasonable. I was providing context."

"You provided backstory about oat milk, cotton rounds, Jeff Bezos, a wedding in Maine, and a mysterious ceramic object."

"The ceramic object is relevant because I was going to use the scissors to open its packaging—we never actually opened it, did we? It's been sitting in that bathroom cabinet for three years still in its original packaging, which really says something about our commitment to purchases, or maybe it says something about the wedding industrial complex and how it turns everyone within a fifty-mile radius into some kind of consumer zombie buying artisanal objects they'll never use just to feel like they participated in someone else's life milestone—"

"Sarah."

"Right. Getting the scissors now. Thank you for your time and patience."

"The ceramic thing is a soap dish, by the way."

"...oh my god, it is. We already have three soap dishes."

"I know."

"Why didn't you stop me from buying it?"

"I tried. You said it 'spoke to you.'"

"Past me is a fucking idiot."

"I love you anyway."

"That's the real mystery, honestly. Second drawer from the left?"

"Second drawer from the left."

"Got it. Hey, while I have you—quick question—"

"No."