The Great Cheeseburger Punt with Caleb

Caleb is my husband of almost six years—web developer, WoW player, Transformers enthusiast, and owner of a cute behind. He blogs about movies, books, and WoW frequently at 20four12

Girls tend to have feelings. Lots of them. That shouldn't surprise anyone, anywhere. I live with two girls, Holly, my fantastic wife, and Lucy, my little tiny one, and both have feelings. Most of the time these feelings are expressed in a pretty normal manner, but sometimes things get a little crazy up in our place. Today, I'm going to reveal the absolute best expression of feelings I've ever seen. I'm going to tell you all about what I like to call, "The Great Cheeseburger Punt."

A long time ago in a city about 30 miles away Holly and I were living in the fairly rudimentary married-student housing at Brigham Young University. We were actually in our second apartment there, and we were both still attending classes. We didn't have kids at this point and had been married for a little over a year. 

One evening we decided to go to McDonald's for dinner. Off we went, down the road to the nearby location that we frequented often. Through the drive-thru window we go ordering our usual fare, chicken nuggets for me, a cheeseburger or two for Holly, and a couple of drinks. It didn't take long, we were on our way back to our apartment within just a few minutes. In we go to the parking lot to our assigned spot and I turn the car off to get out. 

Then everything changed.

I'm not entirely sure there was any preceding signs to what was about to happen. I don't remember Holly being in a particularly fragile state at the time, or in a bad mood of any sort. But, apparently she was.

Our usual practice was that I would grab the drinks as I got out of the car and Holly would grab the bag of food, so that's what I did. I popped the door, grabbed the drinks, shut the door, and started walking down the sidewalk towards the apartment. 

Then, out of nowhere, the scream of a tortured soul ripped through the air. I spun around, no clue what was happening and saw that Holly was standing next to the car. The bag of food had ripped open at the bottom, spilling my chicken nuggets and her cheeseburgers all over the pavement. I didn't have a chance to start walking back to help, when out of nowhere Holly lets loose with another scream and quite literally punts her fallen cheeseburger into the air. The thing flew at least 20-30 feet through the air, coming unwrapped along the way and spraying bun, pickles, beef patty, and toppings across the lawn.

I was stunned into immobility. My jaw was hanging open. As the burger (or what was left of it) hit the ground I looked back to Holly and see her running frantic down the sidewalk, hair flying, arms pinwheeling, screams of a hellion bursting from her throat. She charged past me and screamed uninterrupted the entire way up the flight of stairs to our apartment and into our bedroom. 

It took me a moment to look at where she had run, look back to the car, look over to the cheeseburger victim, and decide to go pick up my chicken nuggets.

The food was fine, excluding our burger victim, and I calmly picked it up, carried it inside and set it on the table. Knowing my wife as I do I didn't go to the bedroom door to ask if she was okay. I just sat down, ate my chicken nuggets, fries, and delicious orange drink, and then sat back to decide what to do. After a few minutes I still hadn't heard from Holly inside the bedroom, so I picked up my keys, drove back to McDonald's, bought another cheeseburger or two, and brought them home.

Holly eventually emerged a little while later and on the table was her drink, fries, and burgers. She ate them and said she was sorry for making a scene. To this day, I don't know what the whole thing was about, but it was certainly an expression of feelings that hasn't been topped to this day in our almost six years of marriage.