This is how they do it

Photo by Michael Hamments on Unsplash

If you want to think about how "flooding the zone" works, imagine this scenario. Over breakfast, I tell my husband, "This week I'm going to have lunch in Budapest, slap your mother, eat all the donuts I want, slash the tires on your car, fix the leaky toilet, make the neighbor stop stealing our mail, and replace all the doorknobs. By the way, did you know that our roof is too slippery for Santa Claus? It's really dangerous to have a roof like that, and flat roofs are much better. Anyway, there's more coffee if you want it and I'm a lot prettier than your sister."

Hubby isn't sure how to respond, but he knows that lunch in Budapest is unrealistic and our mail hasn't been stolen. The comments about the roof sound crazy, but in the meantime, hearing that I might fix the leak makes him feel hopeful. "Don't you dare slap my mother," he says. I just laugh and tell him that's not what I meant, I'm just going to tell her to stop giving our kids so many cookies and I might have to yell a little. By now, he can barely remember anything I said, except that I mentioned his sister. "What's my sister got to do with it?" he asks. "She bakes the cookies," I explain.

At this point, he's thoroughly confused and doesn't even remember to get a second cup of coffee. Later in the week, when he finds all his tires slashed, he storms into the house, only to find that I've removed all the doorknobs. It turns out that I sold them for scrap metal, and Hubby eventually has to hire a guy to replace them (with plastic ones so I won't take them again). He doesn't even ask me about the tires, which get replaced by insurance. The toilet is still leaking.