Black Bears

In my ten years of marriage, one of my proudest achievements is never having been busted with wandering eyes. When out with my wife, my field of vision is firmly restricted to a 4x4 swath of concrete directly in front of my footfalls.

Not to say that there isn’t plenty to draw my attention, but I am a creature of preparation. I need to have responses at the ready for any eventuality. And for the life of me, I have never been able to imagine an appropriate answer to the following line of questioning:

Vy are you looking at her? You theenk she eez preetier than Alex? Vy don’t you marry her, bastard!?

“But sweetie, remember, I’m gay! Silly!”

“Her? Are you kidding? She’s way too (fat/skinny/short/tall/young/old/fast) for me.”

“And give up my security blanket?”

Thus unable to come up with any reasonable response, I have instead devised certain strategies that keep me in her good graces and out of her line of suspicion. For instance, a friend and I developed a secret language at one point to alert us to the presence of the opposite sex.

Well, language might be a stretch. Really, it’s just a phrase:

“Black Bear”

One day we went to Ikea with our wives. I had brought a pair of two-way radios, primarily because Ikea is the largest self-service warehouse on the planet, larger even than the Pentagon or as I like to call it, Uncle Sam's Club. In fact, due to the curvature of the earth, it’s physically impossible to see the walls of Ikea from one end to the other. At one point, the sea of heads and purple pre-assembly furniture parts just gets lower and lower and lower.

But Ikea offers far more than frozen meatballs and dining room tables that double as desks that triple as entertainment centers. It also offers – ahem – Black Bears. Of all shapes, sizes and speeds. Grrr.

*

“Black Bear, 10 o’clock!”

“Which way is 10 o’clock?”

“Use your watch!”

“It’s digital!”

“Northwest, then!”

“But that's you!”

“Not true north! Magnetic north!”

*

You get the idea. We couldn’t very well shout over the radio, “Hot chick, right ahead!” That would be tacky.

*

“Black Bear, 2:30!”

“2:30? You don’t have to use half-hours! I mean how specific do you need to be?”

*

“Black Bear, right next to you!”

“Dude, you’re looking at my wife. All right, let’s not go there.”

*

“Black Bears all around! Mayday!”

- radio static -

“Brandon?! Brandon!?! BRAAAAAAANDOOOOON!!!!!”

*

Of course, every streak must come to an end. And my wandering eyes had a pretty good run, I’d say. Like Enigma, my radio was eventually confiscated, my code cracked. Although I cannot figure out how she could have possibly figured out that ‘Black Bear’ stood for ‘Hot Chick.’ Romanian ingenuity knows no bounds.

Well, almost no bounds. Excuse me, for a moment. A Rabid Bison just walked by my office, heh heh.