The Great China Conspiracy
Marriage, they say, is about compromise. That’s why I now live in what can only be described as a porcelain minefield.
My wife, bless her delicate, doily-loving heart, collects china teacups like a Victorian aristocrat preparing for a ghostly tea party. Every garage sale, antique store, and dusty corner of the internet is an opportunity to “rescue” another lonely little cup with gold trim and a name like "Lady Marigold" or “Queen’s Garden No. 7.”
She displays them in a glass cabinet, arranged by era, color, and level of emotional attachment. Some are apparently too fancy to even be looked at directly during daylight hours.
Now here’s the punchline to this floral-scented joke of fate:
I’m allergic to tea.
Not just a little. I mean eyes-swelling, throat-scratchy, ER-visit kind of allergic. If Earl Grey so much as breathes in my direction, I’m one sneeze away from becoming a medical case study.
So imagine living in a home that constantly smells faintly of bergamot, with a kitchen full of delicate cups I’m not allowed to touch, surrounded by the sound of phrases like, “Oh this one’s from 1892! Feel how thin the porcelain is!” Meanwhile, I’m Googling, “Can you serve coffee in a teacup without being excommunicated from England?”
Every time I walk past her shrine of saucers, I swear they jingle with passive-aggressive delight. I think they know. I think they’re mocking me.
She even hosts afternoon tea parties. With real tea. Real people. Real cucumber sandwiches. I sit on the sidelines like a man allergic to oxygen at an aromatherapy convention, sipping iced water out of a manly mason jar, trying not to break into hives.
But you know what? I still love her.
Even if I suspect she married me to complete some twisted Beauty-and-the-Beast-meets-Chamber-of-China prophecy.
