Johnny Boy Marketing

Welcome to M.I.A. (AKA “Marriage is Awesome), the place where I thoroughly piss off my wife by discussing the finer details of our lives together. In this debut edition, we talk about The Sacred Scissors.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be married to a fine woman for more than 25 years now, and by “fine” I mean fiiiiiine,” not, “She aiiight.”

Part of being married to someone for that long is that you learn a way to stay married is to humbly admit when you were wrong. And so, here we go …

I was wrong about her Sacred Scissors. I thought that only my wife and a few other weirdos had Sacred Scissors. It’s not that I ever challenged her right to have Sacred Scissors. We all have our eccentricities. I’m sure Carla (that’s her name, if you didn’t know) could list a thousand of mine. We’re entitled to our weirdness and should own it and strut around showcasing it like a peacock.

Yesterday, I used the Sacred Scissors. To be fair, I didn’t know I was using the Sacred Scissors. Unlike what some whom I would learn about (we’ll get to that in a moment), Carla’s Sacred Scissors have no label, though to be fair, it’s not likely I would have noticed that detail.

I saw a pair of scissors on the counter, I needed to cut something, so I used them.

Now, here’s the good news, folks: I used the Sacred Scissors on an item on the Pre-Approved For Use By The Sacred Scissors List. Yet sadly, I didn’t do this on purpose. I got lucky. I needed to cut a ribbon to complete wrapping my lovely bride’s birthday presents (Shhhhh…. her birthday is Aug. 4, and I got her some boss stuff…) and “Ribbon” is on The List, along with fabric and assorted other stuff Carla’s told me about but I don’t remember.

Where I committed a violation of the Tenets of the Sacred Scissors was that, thinking they were mere common scissors (no capital letters allowed), I put them back in the drawer where common scissors go. Kudos to me for putting something back in its proper place, right?

Yeah, well. No.

Because Sacred Scissors don’t belong in the drawer reserved for common scissors. Truth be told, I have absolutely no clue where the Sacred Scissors go. I’m imagining they’re kept in some secret off-site location in a climate controlled case guarded by orcs and that all Carla has to do is whistle and a phoenix will fly them directly to her hand and no other hand but hers.

What I do know is that they sure as hell don’t go in the drawer for the common scissors.

So … when my amazing wife found the Sacred Scissors in the common scissors drawer, she questioned how an implement of such cosmically immense importance could end up there, and I — operating in complete ignorance up to this point — suggested maybe she should put a question on Facebook — a question with mutually agreed-upon wording — to see if anyone else has such reverence for scissors.

Here’s what I’ve learned.

1. Oh. My. God. Women of a wide variety of ages love their scissors. I’m talking about “Here are my four children … Billy, Tommy, Jane and Scissors” type love.
2. These women are extremely frustrated by those who, whether through ignorance or stupidity, violate the tenets of the Sacred Scissors. In fact, if voodoo is an actual thing, many husbands would be feeling stabbing pains in their eyeballs.
3. They have spent or would spend comparable money for a pair of good Sacred Scissors to what I would pay for my dream car (a Ferrari, in case you’re wondering, and my birthday is seven days before Carla’s).
4. I was without a shadow of a doubt, completely, 100%, unequivocally wrong in my belief that Carla’s Sacred Scissors was merely a Carla eccentricity not shared by other rational, sane, logical women.

Either that or they’re all nuts. 

John Agliata is a married father of three boys, Jacob (in heaven), Joey and Jonah. They have a bulldog named Luna and a fish named Greg. Carla and John have been married for 25 years, and he now knows to be more careful with his scissor usage.

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