Who is this Broad? — One Angry Waitress

A few years ago, I met a friend’s mother for the first time. I was nervous and, not wanting to say the wrong thing (which is my custom) I tried to talk as little as possible.

The silence hummed between us, until finally she said, “I have something that you need to know. From one woman to another.”

“What is it?” I asked guardedly, already imagining secret societies and women running the stock exchange at night.

“Do you know what to do if you really want to get back at your fella?”

I shook my head, and she leaned in even closer.

“Put a raw fish under the hood of his truck. The smell never goes away, especially if it takes him a few days to realize what the problem is.”

“Who IS this broad?” I thought to myself.

“I can see that you think I’m crazy,” she said, tapping her nose with one long finger “but someday, this little tidbit is going to come in handy.”

As she flitted away, I thought about her suggestion and realized I should’ve asked more questions, the most important being: what kind of fish? I couldn’t really ever see myself doing it though. My partner and I weren’t really the type of couple who played pranks on each other. Though that was early days; the salad days. I see that now.

A few weeks ago, I was in the shower, listening to music that was turned up loud, when my partner—who I hadn’t even known was home—ripped the shower door open and scared the hell out of me.

I waited an hour or so, before he was taking his own respective shower, and then I tip-toed in and tossed a full tray of ice-cubes over the shower curtain. While I listened to his screams, it occurred to me that it had taken a couple of years, but somewhere along the way, I had come to resemble the broad with the fish.

A few days later, after I’d knotted a chain out of my partner’s clean underwear, underwear that I was sick of looking at, I began to take out the screen of our bedroom window. My plan was to toss half of the chain out the window so that, to the neighbours, it would look like someone had just made a harrowing escape.

Then, I thought suddenly of a fish, baking under the hood of a half-ton in the mid-August Edmonton sun, and wondered if the neighbours might call the police. I was going too far. So instead, I draped the underwear, quite festively I thought, over a bedside lamp.

Hours later, when my partner discovered my little tableau, he’d gripped, “Did you have to double-knot them?”

“This could’ve been so much worse,” I assured him, as I patted his arm. “You don’t even know.”

I realize that the decorum with which we started this relationship, has eroded. After five years, we are prone to sneaking up on each other, to throwing water suddenly in each other’s faces, and locking each other out of the house.

“Who are you?” my partner screams, as I chase him through the house after he has soaked me with the garden hose.

“I am your love” I think, as I launch myself at him like a wet spider monkey, “I am the woman who is going to put a fish under the hood of your truck someday.”