Real men buy drapes

Last week, million of viewers watched the rain-soaked Super Bowl on new flat screen plasma televisions. I was supposed to be one of them. The key word in the previous sentence: Was. The Wife had other ideas.

Friday after work, The Wife and I ventured out from our humble abode to buy the television of our dreams. Okay, my dreams. I told her, “A 48-inch high definition plasma television hanging on the wall would make Rachel Ray seem like she’s right in our kitchen cooking.”

She replied with a smile, “If she cooks, she does the dishes.”

After dinner, we left for the giant television store, but we never made it. We first made a quick stop by the linen place. The Wife wanted to look at some drapes. It didn’t make much difference to me. I had waited two years for our giant television — what harm was another 20 minutes going to do? What harm indeed?

For all of you guys out there who have not yet had the pleasure of wandering through endless aisles of drapes, linens, comforters, kitchen gadgets and bathroom stuff, I have a confession to make. It was really cool.

Twenty minutes quickly turned into an hour, then two. We didn’t just look at drapes; we bought drapes for the entire house. The satin drapes for our sitting room were on sale, so we bought them. The tapestries for the formal dinning room were also on sale, so we had to buy them too. And you simply can’t have tapestries without valances – at least that’s what the sales lady said. So we bought them also.

Each drape had to have a hook mounted on the wall for the tie-back so the drape could be pulled back during the day. Can’t buy expensive drapes and have them covering up the windows, now can we? Nope, you have to bunch them up and tie them back. And of course, none of the drapes came with rings to hold them to the rods. Oh, they didn’t come with rods either. Tie-backs, rings, and rods were all extra.

Then we had to buy new place-mats for the dining room table. The old ones simply wouldn’t go with our tapestries. Our new place-mats didn’t match the old center table runner either. I didn’t realize that this was such a big faux pas. Now some of you might ask, “Do you really need a two-foot wide piece of cloth running down the center of the table that matches your tapestries and valances?” I know. I asked The Wife that same question. Her answer was, “Well, of course.”

Don’t ask me what a two-foot piece of cloth down the center of a table is used for – I still don’t know. It must be important as much as it cost. But if a thief breaks into our house, bypasses the 20-inch color television with the faded picture and absconds with our table runner – we’ll be okay. I’m happy to say, we’re the proud owners of not one, but two table runners.

Our purchases that Friday night before the Super Bowl filled three shopping carts — which meant two things. First, we no longer had money for the new flat screen plasma television. Guess it will have to wait for next year. Second, I was going to spend the rest of Super Bowl weekend installing rods, putting in metal tie backs and hanging drapes, tapestries and valances.

But all was not lost; I did learn one very important thing. Guy tip number one: If you really want to make your wife happy – I mean really happy – go out and spend an insane amount of money on drapes, valances, table runners and the like. Then take an entire weekend away from watching football and hang them.

I can assure you, when the drapes are finally up, you will have one of the best weekends of your life. We did. And we didn’t even turn on the television.