Driving home from work, My cell phone rings. It is my wife, Diane.

I answer, “hello?” Diane asks, “Hey, babe, where are you?” I reply coyly, “On my way home, why?” Diane, a little hesitant continues, “Well, I kinda got myself in a situation and I need your help, are you coming straight home?” Me a little curious, I begin to interrogate a little, “Yes, honey, I’m coming straight home. What did you do?”

In my head I picture all of the times I have taken off for rides and Diane has launched major home renovation projects, like painting rooms, adding flower beds, taking down Christmas trees, cleaning out my closet. Fear Strikes.

Diane explains, “You know how you ordered some t-shirts from the internet the other night?” I prompt her to continue, “yeah, what about them?” Diane, stalling a little, “They came in, I thought I’d just check them out, and one of them still had the little ink tag on it. So I figured how tough can it be to get this thing apart and I started messing with it, and an ink cartridge exploded all over the place. Now I’m stuck here holding the shirt and the ink cartridge, but the other half hasn’t gone off yet, I need your help”

In my mind I envision ink squirting all over the house. Kill Bill blood style shooting all over my wife and dogs. Our carpets ruined. I hated the berber anyway. The shirt ruined. I hope it’s not my Frank the tank shirt. With a bit of trepidation I ask, “how bad is it?”

Diane replies glibly, “Not too bad, but the other side is blue, and I really need your help, I’ve been walking around for 20 minutes with this thing trying to get it off without breaking the other side.”

I rush home, and into the house expecting to see yellow ink everywhere. Much to my surprise, the initial explosion has been contained to the kitchen sink. Diane explains “once I saw it was going off I got it underwater pretty quickly so the damage was small, the other side however is blue and will be much worse.”

I smile in a Tim Allen kind of way and say “ I’ve got some tools follow me to the basement. In the basement we stand around the t-shirt and ink cartridge like one of those bad 70’s bomb squad movies. I pull out my trusty SIS cable cutters, and my leatherman’s tool and move closer to Diane. “I can defuse this!”

I think to myself, which tool to I use? Do I cut the red wire or the green one? Without hesitation, I attack the ink tag with the leatherman’s tool. Diane screams and backs away “be careful, it’s gonna blow!” I jump back trying to shield myself for the potentially exploding blue ink tag.

“whew, that was close” I think to myself and I approach again, this time with the SIS cable cutters, I gently wedge the blades between the shirt and the tag, it’s very tight, I squeeze the cutters, the tag cracks, it’s gonna blow !! Quickly Diane raises the shirt now detached from the tag into the air with her left arm above her head. With her right arm she now holds the disarmed ink tag straight out as far away from her as she can.
Wow. We made it. No blue ink explosion. I have to be honest; I figured the T-shirt was a lost cause. I was having fun playing bomb squad, and hoped at best to not get ink all over my wife. Well, damn that worked out well. Kinda makes the story a little anti-climatic thought doesn’t it? Well, I can only tell ‘em like I see ‘em. One thing is for sure though, Diane will never make a living as a shop lifter, and I’ll never be on any bomb squad.


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fatmarc