Callie, The Xanthippe

Feel free to comment. Moderation is turned off. 

Herman Wilkins sighed. Callie Hawkes, next door, was at it again. Would she ever be happy with anything Benny did to try pleasing her?

Looking out his window, he observed the couple on their patio. Benny had just finished trimming the hedge around the edge of their yard, and, to Herman, it seemed to be quite even and neat.

"I wish I could get mine to looking that good," Herman was thinking.

Benny sat down at the table, placing the hedge trimmers on the edge of the table. His wife, Callie, was sitting and drinking a cold glass of something, doing her usual carping.

"Benny!  "Those hedges are not even! Don't you know how to do anything?" She shouted shrilly at him.

"Apparently not," he muttered to himself.

"Get those nasty trimmers off the table! It's like living with a heathen!"

She went on, not stopping for a breath.

"You forgot to carry out the trash last night, and I had to do it myself! Just like everything else around here! God knows why I ever agreed to marry you!  My dear Mama warned me! She told me you'd wind up being the death of me! But I didn't listen! More's the pity!"

"Hmmm. I agree, Callie." He muttered again.

Herman turned away from the window, and went to hug his own wife, who was in the living room. 

Outside, Benny stood, turned slightly, smiling, to the woman who never seemed to let up on her caustic criticism of him as a man. He picked up the hedge-trimmers.

"Perhaps I'd better have a go at a do-over," he replied and revved up the electric hedge trimmers. ...