Over and over

“If I have to tell you once,” Martha said, breathing in between each word like a track runner after setting the quarter-mile record, “I have to tell you a hundred times. If you’d just listen to me and do it the way I told you, it would’ve turned out right. But no, you have to do it your own way and that’s when things start going wrong.”

George’s chipmunk cheeks sagged with the corners of his mouth. “But I try, I try and do my best, and you got to give me credit for that. And you can’t exactly do it right now, Martha. Not in your condition.”

“My condition has nothing to do with this. This is all about your incompetence and complete inability to follow instructions. Now fetch me a gin and tonic, and this time, it’s one-third gin, two-thirds tonic, and a teaspoon of lime juice. Now hop to it, George!”

“Oh, all right,” George said. He went over to the bar and looked for the gin – and there it was, the Gordon’s. So he mixed Martha’s gin and tonic, made one for himself, and sampled both to make sure they were right –

“Who ever told you to sample my gin and tonic? I’ll sample it, George,” Martha said. “Again … not following instructions, George. Not following instructions.”

“Hey, what’s going on in here?”

George and Martha looked over at the hallway – there stood their son, arms out in a question mark.

“Oh, pooh,” Martha said. “Your father can’t follow instructions and he’s made a whole tempest in a teapot. And now he’s sampling the cocktails. Would you like a cocktail, son – one that your father sips before giving to you? Honestly, George.”

“What’d Dad do that’s so terrible, Mom?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. When he emptied the dishes, he put the dinner forks in the salad fork compartment and the salad forks in the dinner fork compartment. I mean, can you believe this man?”