The Unexpected Gift of Bill Cosby

All December, the counselor kept asking what I wanted for Christmas.  This is a very difficult question to answer, because as a thrift store/yard sale girl, I get pretty much can purchase anything I want at rock bottom prices.  There is rarely a time when I need/want something that I haven’t already picked up used. 

I wasn’t sure what I wanted for Christmas.

I already had clothes, all the name brand clothes I want I find at Goodwill on dollar day?

Home décor?  Had it!

Jewelry?  Found it?

Furniture?  Don’t even get me started.

Figuring out what I want for birthdays and holidays is an on-going problem (imagine how sweet my life is if my problem is I have been blessed with so much).  Still, the counselor is a man who enjoys celebrating events with a gift, so this year for Christmas he moved past the point of waiting for me to tell him what I want and just surprised me:

With tickets to go see Bill Cosby at the Mesa Center for the Arts.

(image found here)

I was thrilled.

The big day was last week.  I wore my new Anthropologie shirt I found at the thrift store. 

Here’s what I learned from Bill Cosby.

That we as women are such brats to our husbands and they love us anyway.

Mr. Cosby did not say this in a mean, derogatory way.  He had many humorous examples to prove this point (examples from his own marriage), many examples that I could see myself in (and I just held onto Derek’s hand, hoping he didn’t see me in them too). 

Mr. Cosby started out sharing the emotional torment a man goes through the night before he proposes marriage to the woman he loves.  Anguish, humility, desperation; basically, hoping the girl is just crazy enough to want to spend the rest of her life with him.

And from this point on, the man becomes a prisoner of love, held captive and ready to serve his woman for the rest of his life.

Mr. Cosby shared examples of overhearing his wife say to her friends “What would have ever happened to him if he hadn’t married me?  Really, where would he be in life?”  Implying what a bad state he’d be in.  This was all shared in good humor, but as a married woman, haven’t we at times thought this about our men?

Because we are brats!

Mr. Cosby talked about in his home he can never put anything down and hope to find it again.  “I take off my shoes by my favorite chair, get up to get a glass of water, and come back only to realize my shoes are gone, put away, never to be seen again.”  His wife is the one who has put them somewhere, but if Mr. Cosby asks her where they are, she implies that something is wrong with him, like he could never take care of himself.  I could relate to this little dilemma because it is an ongoing struggle in my home.  The counselor takes off his shoes every night and leaves them at the side of the bed.  I can’t tell you how many times he’s asked me later if I’ve seen his shoes.  Most of the time, I respond in a sarcastic way, like it’s his problem, only to realize I’ve put them in the closet or the shoe box by the front door. His dinner plate?  Usually moved by me before he’s done eating.  His paper work?  Usually stacked in some remote part of the office never to be seen again.  Keys to the pool?  They are never where he leaves them because they are moved to a location I think will be easier to find.  Tools?  I get them out of his tool box and never put them back because I’m usually side-tracked by something else.

But, when he asks if I’ve seen any of these items, I act so put out, like it’s his problem.

See what I mean!  I’m a total brat!

The evening with Bill Cosby went on and one, with one example after another of what we women do to drive our men crazy, all the while they love us passionately while we just roll our eyes back at them.  He never implied men are perfect.  He pointed out his own hypocrisy too.  Nothing was left unexamined in his dialogue.  

I was laughing so much at some points of the show because I couldn’t believe how accurate the humor was, how much the stories portrayed real life, my life.  What was so sweet about the entire event is there was never a single doubt in my mind that Bill Cosby didn’t absolutely adore his wife.  I thought about the differences between man and woman and how we still want to share our lives together, that we don’t drive each other crazy, instead we love each other more and more every day.    I think that’s why Bill Cosby is such a prominent figure in entertainment, because we can see ourselves in his comedy and actually learn something that might make us better people. 

The counselor is sentimental, so for him it was just such a treat to be listening to Bill Cosby.  He laughed and enjoyed himself while I overanalyzed every thing.  Yeah, that’s another difference between my husband and I and some how, it continues to work for us.  Thank you honey, for a great gift I could never purchase at a yard sale or thrift store. I love you and I will not move your shoes, paper work, tools, etc. again.  

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