The other day I was thinking how great it is to finally be dating a guy who comes with his own “self-cleaning” setting.
Because, to be honest, I’ve dated some real “fixer-uppers.”
And while I reflected on this in the shower, I remembered that I once dated a cab driver who asked me to help him shave the dead skin off his feet.
And I did.
Because, y’know, we were dating and I thought I should - to show my devotion and willingness to go the extra mile in a relationship. Course, later after I had broken up with him, he commented that I was high maintenance. But y’know - that’s another thread.
Because the point of this MPSIMS is to ask this: What kind of things have you found yourself doing for the sake of a loved one (spouse, SO, family member, friend) that you NEVER thought you would find yourself doing?
Now, I do not in any regards mean to discount those who’ve suffered through a loved one’s illness by ANY means. But my hope is that this would be a more light-hearted conversation (around the table over beers kind of sharing) - not things that are going to make me cry.
But… was this the prdinary thing that happens during a pedicure? You know, pumice-like thing being rubbed on the heel to get rid of dead skin? Or was this something more ambitious?
To answer the OP: first date with a woman who had two sons, one a newly-minted teenager. On Valentine’s Day, no less.
We return from a nice dinner to discover that son #1 had gotten into the liquor cabinet, drunk from a variety of bottles, thrown up everywhere, tried dizzily to clean it up, panicked at the thought of Mom coming home, and dimly remembered that coffee was supposed to make people sober. So he tried to make coffee, and was… not successful. She was mortified, but I figured that this was a great chance to make a great impression, so I rolled up my sleeves and, while she was shepherding her still buzzed 13-year-old into bed, I got the kitchen cleaned, disinfected, and a fresh pot of coffee made.
It’s not that I never thought I’d clean a kitchen of spilled coffee and puke… but I never imagined it as the end of a Valentine Day’s first date.
My ex and I used to live in a fairly tick infested area, and I had to perform “tick checks” with the requisite tick removal. Yes, it is exactly what you are thinking. Amazingly enough, I can perform these types of checks on my own person just fine.
No - this was the take a serious looking razor and cut away layers. He was a cab driver who wore flip flops all day because his feet hurt otherwise. Imagine 40-50 hours a week of your heels being rubbed against floor boards for years and years on end.
He had tried to perform the task on himself before - he broke 2 razors.
I only did it once, maybe twice - after making him seriously soak his feet to soften it as much as possible.
I think I broke up with him before he asked me to do it again.
Do tell - what about your date? Did you continue seeing her? Or was this a “one-time date and I cleaned up puke for nothing” thing?
When my ex-wife was pregnant with the Elder Ottlet, she happened to notice a movie called Can I Do It 'Till I Need Glasses? on the “please take this off our hands” rack at a local video store. Later that evening she developed an inexplicable urge to watch it, so I ended up going out (in the rain) to fetch it. My comment to the clerk: “most pregnant women send their husbands out for pickles and ice cream . . .”
And yes, the movie was every bit as dreadful as you might expect.
Not up there with a dead-skin pedicure, but still not something I would have done on my own.
Helping apply hemorrhoid medicine to my lady love’s behind during the end stages of pregnancy. (I WAS the one who’d put her in that position, after all…) This also entailed my helping her wipe after going to the bathroom.
On a less disgusting and more ongoing basis, I help her shave her legs. Women who hear about this always look at me as if checking for a cape and a big red S on my chest.
Is she pregnant now? Just curious. After I couldn’t see my legs anymore when I was pregnant, I sort of forgot about them until I realized, when my son had dropped really low and I had started to dilate, that someone else would see them while I was in labor. So I sat down on the shower floor to shave and almost couldn’t get back up. I can definitely see why that’d be an added superpower in a husband.
The grossest thing I’ve done is, like ENugent, squeeze goop out of a boil my husband had lanced. It was pretty revolting.
Edited to add: after that, we’ve always joked about the twin he had growing out of his back, imitating the woman in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who had a lump removed and it turned out to have teeth and hair.
One of my exs had a serious foot-hating thing, also a cleanliness thing. She got this blister one time. She then went swimming with me and some others in a local river, which got dirt caught under the (now popped) blister. I had to very gently cut away the dead skin around the blister so we could clean off the scary dirt. She was practically squealing in terror, but also desperate to get the foot clean. Very surreal.
Parenting eventually includes almost everything that doesn’t require a medical license of some kind.
As far as adults go, probably the most memorable was removing the dressings from my husband’s big toenails after they’d been operated on by the podiatrist. (The doctor killed a small section of the outside growth area in the nailbed and made the nails more narrow to prevent chronic ingrown nails.)
Anyway, it took almost an hour to slowly lift the bandages off with excrutiating delicacy. It was so painful that my husband had to lie flat on the floor and still almost fainted a couple of times.
It turned into an almost four-year-long relationship, so I’d say the clean-up investment paid off.
In fact, it’s the only one of past relationships that makes my wife upset, because with Ms. Pukeyson’s advice and guidance, I bought a sectional for my living room. Years later, when Ms. P was a memory and my wife and I moved in together, she didn’t like it, and asked how it was I had chosen such an ugly (in her view) piece of furniture. And when I mentioned that it was the pick of a former SO, the fate of the sectional was sealed, and it shortly afterward passed beyond the ken of the Bricker household.
When **Mrs. Wargamer **was pregnant with Wargamerette #2, she spent the days from February 1 until June 15 throwing up and unable to keep ANY food down. So, her OB had her get a central line, and I spent three months hooking her up to a TPN bag every night and taking it off every morning, while sleeping on the downstairs sofa because she would puke if I rolled over in the middle of the night.
Detoxing my husband after finding out he was a drug addict. I never thought I’d be sitting in parking lots in seedy neighborhoods crying while my premature newborn nursed and my husband, who put us in financial ruin was inside a building, drinking coffee, getting help at the only place in 5 counties that would take him. Narcotics Anonymous.
Realizing that sometimes, when you agree to be together through better or worse, sickness and health, for richer or poorer, that you don’t really expect to get all three at once. Especially not 3 weeks post-partum.