Taking One for the Team

Yesterday I surprised my wife when I volunteered to drive her to an outlet mall about an hour away from here.  As I mentioned before, I hate shopping with a white hot passion.  My wife, on the other hand, can happily spend an entire day shopping, something I usually describe as grazing.  I think my problem with it is the lack of purpose.  If I want to buy something I go to the store, find it, pay for it, and leave.  This is entirely too boring for my wife who seems to glean real pleasure out of the, to me, pointless wandering through a store.  Anyway, my daughter gave her a discount certificate that could only be used at this outlet mall and it had been burning a hole in her pocket ever since.  She went to the mall a couple weeks ago with friends but needed to go back to get some things she missed.  She had been dropping hints all week about the fact I had promised (three years ago) to take her to this mall and never did.  My wife never forgets a promise, especially one concerned with shopping.  I had been distracted all week with the upcoming job change and just gave her non-committal grunts when she brought it up.  Yesterday morning I told to get ready because we were going, she was appropriately ecstatic.  I took along my kindle for an afternoon of reading in the parking lot.  On the way down I noticed a movie theater about 7 miles from the mall, SCORE!!!  I dropped her off at the frighteningly crowded mall with a planned rendezvous time and escaped from the mall as quickly as I could.  I made my way back to the movie theater and luckily caught a movie just as it was starting. The movie was "J. Edgar" and I really enjoyed it.  I'm usually very critical of DeCaprio, thinking he gets more credit than his performances merit but he is truly impressive in this movie.  Eastwood has turned out to be one of the generation's great directors, with most of his best efforts after the age of seventy.  I came out of the movie just fifteen minutes short of the time I was supposed to pick up the wife.  She was tired but grinning from ear to ear and regaled me with stories of her adventures that day in the mall, where she even picked up a few new techniques.  Seeing her happy always lifts my spirits.  We went out to dinner and had a great talk.  When we got home she even let me watch a hockey game without complaining.  In taking one for the team (our marriage) it turned out to be a great day for both of us.