Alright, my wife broke her foot.  Every time we go anywhere I hear, “What did you do?”, or “Oh, you poor thing.”  Enough already. 

It's not that I don’t feel bad for her, but what about me?  My life is in turmoil as well.  The constant, “Honey could you get me the…”, or, “Sweetie, I can’t reach the…”, and of course, “I don’t mean to bother you but…”.  Multiply that by a thousand and see how you would bear up.  If things were turned around I’m willing to wager that about the second time I said, “Honey could you get me..?”, and I’d hear an emphatic, “You don’t need it.”  And another thing, you can’t imagine how her accident has disrupted our caching.  Let me give you an example.

Wife:  “I’m bored.  You just don’t know how terrible it is to be stuck in the house for days on end.”

This is where I get confused.  I don’t know?  Its not as though she’s been alone.  Where have I been?  Out painting the town red while she sits home alone moping.  Who’s been her gofer for the last three weeks?  Of course I didn’t mention any of that but instead tried to find a solution to her discomfort and a fix for my caching addiction.

Me:  “Would you like to try to do a simple cache?”

Wife:  “I suppose we could if it doesn’t involve too much walking.  Its so hard to get around with the crutches.  Do you think you could find something we could do?”

Something we could do?  I had a long list compiled of easy caches recently published while we’ve been trapped home.  I tried not to sound too anxious.  

Me:  “I think I may be able to find something.”

So off we go.  That sounded easy, didn’t it?  What really happened was it took about an hour to get her ready and stuffed into the car.  I had picked a cache that wasn’t exactly a P&G but would still be easy and offer the wife somewhat of a challenge.  We parked next to the paved path which lead to the cache. 

Wife:  “How far is it?”

Me:  “The GPS says about two hundred feet.”

Wife:  “That’s too far.  You go get it while I wait in the car.”

I knew if she didn’t go after this one it would be a long time before we would get to go again.  It took some convincing but finally she relented.  It was almost as arduous to get her unloaded as it was to get her into the car.  Soon we were walking down the path.  When I say walking I may be misleading.  It was agony to watch how slowly the wife was moving.  I know she was using crutches and was wearing a large black boot but, come on.  She was moving so slowly I believe if she was in a race with her shadow, she would come in a close but disappointing second.  As I watched her inch along I was reminded of my experience in Army basic training.  Our Drill Sergeant would make all the recruits run a mile on an oval track.  To discourage running too slowly the sergeant would get behind the recruit in last place and kick him in the seat of his pants yelling at him to go faster.  At the time I thought the sergeant’s behavior was abhorrent.  But after watching the wife’s painfully slow progress, I could now better understand the wisdom of the sergeant’s training techniques.  I tried to stay behind her so she wouldn’t see my frustration.

Wife:  “I’m going as fast as I can.”

Me:  “I didn’t say anything.”

Wife:  “Don’t think I can’t hear you sighing.”

Me:  “I’ll try not to breath so loudly.”

Well, after a few days we arrived at GZ.  It turned out the cache was a couple of feet from the path hanging in a small tree about shoulder high. The wife spotted it and quickly retrieved the bison tube.

Wife:  “I found it!”

I stood amazed at how nimbly she could move.  I was equally amazed at how quickly she reverted back to almost helplessness as we labored back down the trail.  By the end of the week, we got back to the car.  I performed the task of reloading the wife and we were on our way home.   Having found only one cache, I was brooding over the miserable time we had had when the wife said…

Wife:  “Wasn’t that fun?”

By nanncyan

The wife and I have been geocaching about three years now.  We enjoy the exercise and great scenery.  We are surprised by the parks that we never knew exsisted right in our own back yard.  We live in Comstock Park Michigan.  We are fortunate to have thousands of caches within a short drive.  We are recently retired and plan to cache around the country.  Who knows maybe we will be in Washington next July for GW VIII!  Our goal is to keep geocaching fun.  I hope our stories relate that to others.

Marvin Altena