How many of you have someone that you trust?
I mean really trust without question or doubt? Myself, I have a select few that I would trust in almost any situation—that includes those crazy situations you only ever see in the movies—and among those people, or more accurately at the top of this list is my wife of ten years, Sarah.
Sarah and I have three rowdy boys, all under the age of ten. She works full-time as a hospice nurse and I am obviously a college student, and not so obviously an ex-semi-pro musician.
We have been through a plethora of experiences together and I would trust that woman with my life. Unless it depended on her fighting giant spiders, in that case I believe it would be lights out for Robbie.
So, before we embarked on the wonderful voyage of parenthood, we were just like any other normal couple. We had a puppy and an apartment and life was grand. Not that life is less than grand today, it’s just a lot louder.
This particular story takes place on a Saturday morning many years ago in our apartment. Sarah and I had just finished breakfast and were talking when she stood and took our plates to the kitchen and sat them in the sink.
I don’t recall today if it was her who offered to get me the glass of milk, or if I requested it, but it was decided she would bring me some from the kitchen either way.
So soon she returns from the kitchen with a glass of nice, icy cold milk and hands it to me.
Now, up until this point Sarah had never done anything that would ever make me question her judgment, but as I drank down a big gulp without smelling or looking, I quickly realized─ during my frantic dash to the bathroom─ something was horribly wrong here.
Apparently the milk was a few days past prime and had begun the short trip to a life of ease as cottage cheese when Sarah had so generously given it to me. She felt bad when it happened, or so she says, but since then she has a nice little laugh about it every time it gets brought up.
Now fast-forward ten years, we have a decade more memories together and we depend on each other─ and trust each other─ more now than we ever have before.
That being said, since the rancid milk day, I have smelled every single glass of milk she has given me.
Not because I don’t trust my wife, or that I expect her to give me sour milk again; It’s that it was such an unpleasant experience for me that I take precautions to ensure it does not happen again.
This got me thinking: The expression “forgive but don’t forget” must originate from a similar experience. I wonder if the person to coin the phrase was led astray by someone they trusted as well. I wonder what their sour milk was.
The moral of the story here is: Love always, trust when it’s appropriate. Never show complete blind faith in someone no matter how much you love them though. If they are deserving of that trust chances are they won’t mind you sniffing the milk first every once in a while.
I can count on my wife for anything, but for some reason I’ve never been able to get passed the milk incident of 2003.
There was also a very questionable decision regarding a peach, but that’s for another time.
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