I have witnessed a phenomenon on numerous occasions and I have no idea how to explain it.  It’s not a UFO or human levitation or a Sasquatch.   It’s even more inexplicable.  Everytime my wife drives my truck something supernatural happens.  Sometimes it’s the “dent fairies”.  Sometimes it a sudden and catastrophic failure of cyanoacrylate adhesives such as that holding the rearview mirror in place.  On occasion it’s the untimely demise of the headlight switch.  A time or two it was a sudden loss of gravity in a large, uncovered cup of Coke.  Things you normally would read about in the Weekly World News.

    Friday the dent fairies appeared out of nowhere and attacked without provocation.  Not the fenders or bumpers, but the roof.  It looks like someone whacked the back edge of the roof with a 2 x 4.  When I asked how it happened the reply was simply, “A tree limb fell on it.”  Unfortunately, my engineering brain kicked in and determined that a tree limb could not possibly have been responsible for the sharp, straight dent along the rear edge of the cab; the strongest portion of the roof.  But, that was her story and she stuck to it.

    One time I came home from work and there were dents in BOTH rear fenders just behind the wheels.  She claimed to have absolutely no knowledge of them and even had the audacity to go out and look at them in order to “believe” me.  After about two minutes I figured out how it happened.  She had used the 16’ trailer and tried unsuccessfully to back it up...twice!  The dents matched up perfectly with the side rails of the trailer.  I asked how in the world it was possible to back up a 16 foot long trailer until it jack knifed in excess of 90 degrees on the side of the truck and not know it.  She just looked at me menacingly.

    Another time I came home from work and the truck and trailer were abandoned two thirds of the way up the driveway.  She had gotten a load of sand...wet sand...and made it all the way home before the trailer hitch finally caught on the ground and would go no further.  She was nowhere to be found.  She had gotten in the other car and left.  I had to unload most of the sand from the trailer in order to move the truck.  The guy that loaded it dumped the sand on the front end of the trailer instead of over the axles.  Not only that, but he hit the trailer fender with his front end loader.  When she came home I explained the mechanics of proper trailer loading but, as always, it was like staring into the eye of a chicken.

    The one thing that really rubs me the wrong way, though, is when she says, “Driving that truck is like driving a log wagon.”  First of all, she’s never driven a log wagon.  She fell off a turnip wagon once, but that’s about it.  Secondly...well there is no secondly, but she shouldn’t be complaining about my truck.  I don’t make her drive it.

    The biggest mistake I ever made was telling how to hook up the trailer.  She called me at work one day and had backed the truck up to the trailer and wanted to know how to hook it up.  Like a fool I talked her through every step of the process.  My coworkers listened to every word of our conversation.  It would have been easier to talk down a 747.  By the time I was done, I was sweating.  My coworkers were standing at the door of my cube looking at me like I was defusing a bomb or something.

    You know what though, after all these years I’ve gotten used to it.  A lot of wives think they are princesses and their husbands are no more than frogs begging for a kiss.  I knew mine wasn’t a princess when she tried to talk me into buying her a dump truck.