By Dick Wolfsie
Guest Columnist

Do you need help? I’d like to give you some. Help is unwanted in my house. I try to give help, but Mary Ellen doesn’t want it.

She is totally helpless.

Dick Wolfsie

This is of her own choosing. If you are confused by this, let me give you a few examples that might be helpful.

First, Mary Ellen is usually in the kitchen around 6 p.m. preparing dinner. I always ask, “Anything I can help with?” It’s been more than 40 years since she could think of something that I would really be of any help doing. I sometimes say, “Is there anything you can help me, help you with?” Nope. Nothing.

I’m also not allowed to do the taxes anymore. One year, we were audited because I had taken a deduction for pizza delivery because I ate in my home office.

I am not allowed to load dishes in the dishwasher because Mary Ellen has this crazy idea that cups, utensils and plates have their own special place in the machine.

But I am good at getting stubborn lids off cans and bottles. I like doing this because it makes me feel needed. Plus, I enjoy the beer.

On rare occasions, she requests that I go to the supermarket on my own, but she takes no chances with my ability to find exactly what she needs. Let’s take one example.

“Dick, I need almond milk. I am sending you a text to remind you exactly what to get. It has to say UNSWEETENED; it has to say ALMOND BREEZE and it has to say ORIGINAL on the container. It can’t say VANILLA. Now I am also going to send you a picture of the package so you can’t possibly make a mistake.”

I ask people shopping in the dairy department if they know where almond milk is. They just shrug. Apparently, these people drink something that comes from a cow’s udder. Yuck.

Finally, I did see a bottle of cashew milk, so I bought it.

“What did you buy, Dick? This is cashew milk. I don’t like cashew milk.”

“I figured any nutty idea was as good as the next.”

Once, when Mary Ellen called me, she requested canned tomatoes and said she would text me a photo and description of exactly what she wanted. But when I got to the supermarket, my phone was dead. I wasn’t taking any chances. I did not want to go back to the store. So, I got tomatoes every which way: diced, as a sauce and a soup, stewed, crushed, whole peeled, quartered, sun dried and condensed. They were all wrong. I was back at the store an hour later. What the heck is tomato paste? At least it doesn’t sound as bad as Gorilla Glue.

Recently, Mary Ellen requested I stop and pick up, get ready for this, a container of egg whites.

“Mary Ellen, I’ll never find something weird like that. I’ll buy two dozen eggs and separate them myself.”

“No, the package must say cage-free. It has to be 100% liquid, and it must be zero cholesterol.”

I asked one of the clerks. “Do you sell egg whites?”

“Of course.”

“Where should I look?”

“Inside our eggs.”

Finally, later that day, Mary Ellen agreed she would extract the egg whites herself. This incident did cause some conflict between us. But we made up. Now only our eggs are going to be legally separated.