Grumpy Humphrey's Easy Wife

Perhaps blinded by his new bride's stunning good looks and making allowances for her young age of 21, Humphrey settled Lorraine's debts by repaying the unfortunate vendors to whom she had passed bad checks and saved her from this becoming a police and court matter, but made sure that he would keep a close eye on their finances to make sure she would not repeat this pattern of behavior. Things were okay now with him and Lorraine working full time jobs, but when they had children Lorraine would obviously have to give up work so he would need to be careful with their finances in the future if Lorraine was irresponsible and got them into debt or started bouncing checks again.

As it turned out however, the issue of managing finances when the children came along proved to be moot. Month after month went by, and Lorraine failed to fall pregnant. After consulting with doctors, it was determined that everything was fine with Lorraine's reproductive system and she would have no problem falling pregnant and giving birth to babies. She could have a dozen kids if she chose, which would be apt as Lorraine herself was one of 14 children, seven girls and seven boys.

The problem lay entirely with Humphrey. A bout of mumps at a critical point in his teens had rendered him completely sterile and he could only fire blanks. He and Lorraine in theory could have sex seven times a day at the mid-point of Lorraine's monthly cycle, and it would not make a single bit of difference, in two weeks' time Lorraine would get her period without fail.

The hospital gave Humphrey and Lorraine some pamphlets and forms about adoption as well as the contact details of an adoption agency, telling the couple that there were plenty of unwanted babies who needed good homes as well as children in orphanages. However, Humphrey and Lorraine only got so far as filling in the first page of the forms before throwing them in the trash, deciding not to follow this path and accept that they would be one of those couples for whom children never happened.

Humphrey and Lorraine told each other that the main reason for not adopting was that they wanted to have their own biological children, but neither discussed the real reasons for deciding against adoption. One day, Humphrey had overheard Lorraine talking on the phone to her sister Shirley saying how she thought it was better that they did not have children, as Humphrey was getting way too old to be a first time father. And given how stressed and grumpy he got with students at school, not to mention that he struggled to relate to kids despite his occupation, she dreaded to think how he would cope with small children in the house, then teenagers when he was even older. All in all, Lorraine thought Humphrey would make a pretty bad father and it was better that he never got the opportunity to become one.

Of course, Humphrey never disclosed to Lorraine that he had overheard what she had said to Shirley on the telephone, but while the words of his wife stung he had to admit to himself there was some truth in them. Children did stress him, teenagers even more so. They were bad enough at school, but at home there would be no escape from them. Plus he was well into his 40s now, and his two younger brothers plus his sisters all had children who were now young adults or well into their teens. It would look ridiculous having children so much younger than their cousins.

But while he had reservations about himself as a father, Humphrey had more serious reservations about his wife's competency as mother. Lorraine wasn't really a person who seemed to like children all that much, she was usually cold and stand-offish with the children of Humphrey's brothers and sisters, and generally indifferent to the children of her own siblings, so hardly a loving or maternal aunt.

Humphrey did make some allowances for Lorraine's seeming dislike of children, although she had never expressed outwardly that she disliked kids, because his wife was one of the older siblings in a large family and as such had to take on many of the parenting duties of her younger brothers and sisters while her mother and father concentrated on having more children, despite the lack of resources during the Great Depression. Missing out on a childhood herself, it did explain why Lorraine was aloof to children as an adult.

However, there was an exception to this, and this was the youngest of Lorraine's siblings, a brother named Matthew. Born in 1944, a full 16 years younger than Lorraine and now aged 16 himself, Matthew was Lorraine's clear favorite and she doted upon him, often visiting him and taking him on outings, a really affectionate and loving big sister that contrasted sharply with her usual detached manner from her other younger siblings.

This in itself caused some disquiet in Humphrey when he assessed Lorraine's suitability as a mother. If his wife shamelessly favored one of her younger brothers and made him her pet, who was to say that she wouldn't behave like that with her own children, selecting one kid to love and neglecting the others?

There were other factors too that made Humphrey secretly relieved that their marriage had not produced any children. Lorraine had been irresponsible with money when younger evidenced by her habit of bouncing checks, although this had now been curtailed. She was generally a selfish person, and didn't behave the way a wife should do. Lorraine liked earning her own money and the independence her job afforded her. She saw cooking her husband his dinner as a chore as well as other housework when she should have liked to undertake these activities and serve her husband like normal women did, and she did not bother to hide her feelings. If they were to have children, Lorraine would resent having to give up work to care for them, and would probably resent the children as a result.

Nobody in Humphrey's family liked Lorraine. She would openly flirt with men at family gatherings for birthdays, Christmas, New Year, Easter and Thanksgiving with her husband right there, and the women clearly were antagonized by her presence, not trusting her at all. Humphrey's brothers and sisters could not stand Lorraine, nor could their mother and while Humphrey's father had died in 1956, he never hid his distaste for his eldest son's wife.

Yet even these things were not the worst of his misgivings about his wife. Humphrey could not escape from the knowledge that he was married to the town tramp, or the town bike to borrow an Australian expression he had heard while in the army during the war. Lorraine was a floozy, a slut, a whore, a harlot, a trollop and many other similar terms. She was white trash through and through, the cheapest of the cheap. With the morals of an alley cat, Lorraine belonged in a trailer park or even on the streets. Lorraine's middle name was Jean, but when she signed her name Lorraine J Grim Humphrey thought that the J should probably stand for Jezebel rather than Jean.

Having long suspected that Lorraine was cheating on him, Humphrey finally found proof one day that his wife was an adulteress. After a heated argument over money, Humphrey suspecting from Lorraine's evasive answers about a discrepancy in their finances that she might have been going back to her old ways and bouncing checks, Lorraine had slammed out of the house to cool off.

Humphrey had thought that if his wife had wanted to hide something from him, where would she conceal her secrets? The answer was obvious. Every 28 days, Lorraine would need to visit the pharmacy, speak to a female clerk and hand over the money to receive a product that was wrapped in brown paper for discretion. The objects within the package, white and rectangular in shape with loops at each end, would then be attached to a belt around Lorraine's waist and worn between her legs covered by her panties for a week.

Nothing made Humphrey more uncomfortable in life than menstruating women including his own wife, and this included the sanitary napkins and belt that Lorraine wore to manage her periods. If Lorraine was hiding things from him, where better than in her packet of napkins in her underwear drawer as he would never go there?

Going up to the bedroom, Humphrey found the courage to open Lorraine's underwear drawer, and between her bras and her panties there was her already opened packet of sanitary napkins. Opening the packet, Humphrey expected to find two things, period pads and evidence of his wife's irresponsible spending habits. He obviously found the first but not the second as Lorraine had not done anything wrong like overspending or passing bad checks, however he did find something hidden between the napkins that should not have been there.

Condoms. A number of condoms that might be purchased from a pharmacy or a barber's shop. He and Lorraine had never used condoms, they had no need for birth control. They were childless and always would be as Humphrey was sterile. So why would his wife need condoms unless she was entertaining other men behind his back and obviously didn't want to fall pregnant?

Soon Humphrey found more evidence that Lorraine was playing around when letters addressed to him began to arrive at the house. One, written in capitals in red ink could not be more direct - 'KEEP YOUR HARLOT OF A WIFE UNDER CONTROL AND AWAY FROM MY HUSBAND.'

Another letter arrived not long after, and was written in blue ink and was pretty rambling, quoting scriptures from the bible about adultery and how Lorraine's infidelity breached these commandments. Humphrey apparently also breached the commandments by not making his wife honor and obey him as per their marriage vows. Both would go to Hell for eternity, according to the author of the letter.

A third letter was typed and was two full pages of angry and bitter invective, aimed at both he and Lorraine about how Lorraine was a home-wrecking whore and how Humphrey was a weak and pathetic excuse for a man if he knew about how his wife went around sleeping with other women's husbands and did nothing about it.

Humphrey dreaded to think how many other letters his wife had gotten to before he did and destroyed, but despite having the evidence that Lorraine was an adulteress, he did not confront her about the letters or the condoms, nor did he leave her or consult with an attorney to file for a divorce.

Having waited so long to get married and feeling like a failure every minute of every day of these long years of having nobody in his life and worrying that he would end up alone, Humphrey would have felt like more of a loser that his marriage failed after just a decade. Getting a divorce was difficult legally, emotionally and financially. And while Humphrey got grumpy whenever anyone took him and Lorraine for being father and daughter rather than husband and wife, it did boost his fragile ego when men looked at them in envy, hard to believe that he was married to such a stunning woman years younger. If Lorraine was gone, one of the few things Humphrey felt good about in life was gone too.

So despite knowing his wife was an irresponsible, mooching and promiscuous whore who cheated on him all the time, there was no way Humphrey was going to divorce Lorraine, despite how much stress and resentment his wife's infidelity brought him. The strain of all this combined with the antics of the kids at school, plus the knowledge that he could never father children, had caused Humphrey to become impotent much of the time, unable to rise to the occasion when he tried to make love to Lorraine, earning her anger, scorn and ridicule in bed.

In something of a paradox, when Humphrey was able to obtain and maintain an erection, Lorraine would not be interested and refuse to make herself available to him. She would be tired from work, have a headache or it would be her monthly ladies' problems and Lorraine would either have the curse, be close to having the curse or recovering from having the curse. That Lorraine was only too happy to lower her panties for other men stung like a hornet or bee sting.

The high school was approaching up the road, and Humphrey sighed thinking about what was worse. Was it time spent away from work with his floozy of a wife? Or was it worse at work, when his awful wife was not there but he had to teach awful teenagers in his classes?

Humphrey sometimes wondered if he was jinxed. It was entirely possible. Humphrey's date of birth was the 15th of April 1912. Allowing for time differences between California and the mid-Atlantic ocean, Humphrey's mother had gone into labor with him late in the afternoon of Sunday 14th of April, and he had arrived into the world in the early hours of the morning of Monday April 15. While all this was going on, thousands of miles away the British ocean liner Titanic had hit an iceberg in the frigid sea, sinking with a heavy loss of life in the North Atlantic.

So Humphrey had been born the exact day and close to the time that the Titanic sank. April 15 was also the date that President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated 95 years ago, and was also the day that brought stress for so many Americans - the final day to get their taxes in. Perhaps April 15 was just an unlucky date and people born on it suffered bad luck throughout their lives?

Turning on his indicator, Humphrey drove into the staff parking lot and into a spare space. Students were hanging around and some of them sniggered as Humphrey opened his car door and stepped out with his briefcase.

Humphrey scowled at the giggling students, both male and female. Had they heard what Tommy and his crew had done at his house? Possibly, or maybe they were laughing at his automobile again? The type of automobile owned by Humphrey Grim was a Ford Edsel, which appeared to be a perfect vehicle when he purchased it from the lot in 1958. But an unexpected problem arose when people - mainly but not always students at the school such as Miguel and Leroy from the gas station - started pointing, laughing and making snide comments under their breaths when they saw Humphrey Grim driving his new automobile.

This of course irritated Humphrey, but caused him more confusion. What was possibly so funny about his Edsel automobile that caused people such hilarity when there was of course nothing to laugh at? It was one rare night when he was able to get and maintain an erection and his cheating Jezebel of a bride was willing to have sex with him that he realized the truth. As Lorraine took off her panties and lay on the bed naked, opening her legs wide, he looked at her vagina and only then did he notice the similarity between his wife's genitals and the front grille on his Ford Edsel.

Some seniors sniggered as they passed Humphrey in the corridor, obviously the kids who pulled the Halloween prank on him had shared their experiences to them. Humphrey sighed deeply. It would no doubt be a long day.

*

Humphrey was right. It was a long morning, and the only relief to him was that he had a free period before lunch with no awful teenagers to try and control and teach. However, he did have to grade essays and papers handed in by the aforementioned awful teenagers, and soon the homework was covered in red ink as Humphrey corrected everything from spelling mistakes that first graders would be embarrassed to make and essays so bad and showed that the kids might as well have not been in class at all.

The clock had just ticked by 11.30 when the door of Humphrey's classroom opened, and in walked Principal Porter and Superintendent Simmonds. Principal Porter was a man the same age as Humphrey Grim, only with more hair that was blonde in color and a moustache. Superintendent Simmonds, undertaking a school inspection today, was a portly gray-haired man a few years older, who looked like a frog.

"Superintendent, I'd like to introduce you to Humphrey Grim, one of the school's most experienced social studies teachers," said Principal Porter.

'Good morning Superintendent," said Humphrey, standing up to shake hands with the Superintendent.

"Grim," said Superintendent Simmonds, returning the hand shake.

"Mr. Grim can show you some of the history projects he has set for the junior class this year to date," began Principal Porter, but Superintendent Simmonds did not appear to be listening, rather he was staring unwaveringly at the blackboard.

"Superintendent?" Principal Porter asked.

Superintendent Simmonds pointed at the blackboard. "Grim, Porter what is the meaning of this?" he bellowed, his fat face going red.

Humphrey looked at the blackboard to which the Superintendent was pointing. Earlier in the morning he had written up a number of essay topics for the freshman economics class. Except what he had written had now been erased, and to his horror replaced by new essay topics as follows:

1.The five year plans in the Soviet Union during the 1930s were overall a failure. Offer five suggestions to Mr. Stalin as to how he could have been more successful. Give detailed reasons for your answers.

2.Imagine you live in East Germany and your family or friends feel that the capitalism of West Germany is superior. Put forward compelling and concise reasons to convince them that the communist economic structure of East Germany is better and more equitable.

3.You are a presidential advisor. Write a report to the incoming president, either Mr. Kennedy or Mr. Nixon as to how Washington can introduce economic policies similar to those of Eastern Europe, North Korea or China to greater equalize wealth in America.

4.Describe the ways that American trade sanctions placed upon Cuba are wrong, and what America can do to end these sanctions and appease Cuba in future years.

"Is this communism propaganda your idea of a suitable lesson plan for teenagers, Grim?" demanded Superintendent Simmonds, his face scarlet.

"You had better had a good explanation for this, Grim," warned Principal Porter, horrified that the Superintendent had seen this and that it was written by an experienced teacher who he would never have suspected of being a communist before.

"I never wrote any of this," said Humphrey.

"It's on your blackboard, in your classroom and in your handwriting and it wasn't written by you?" Superintendent Simmonds stormed.

It took over 20 minutes for Humphrey Grim to convince that he was not responsible for the pro-communist economic questions seemingly set as assignments. The writing was a remarkably good forgery of Humphrey's writing, and it was only that some of the loops and curves on some of the letters varied slightly from Humphrey's actual writing on an adjacent board and that it was unlikely even if he was a secret communist that he would be so blatant about it that convinced Superintendent Simmonds and Principal Porter that it was a prank by students.

Superintendent Simmonds laughed. "Kids these days, they sure know how to think up new jokes to play. I played pranks myself as a boy as I'm sure you did too, but never would have I thought of a prank so clever, witty or innovative."

"Yes Superintendent," said Principal Palmer. "That they thought these questions up shows how they pay attention in class, and that they are disliking of communism in general."

"That's true Palmer, you have so many good students in this school," said the Superintendent. "It's only early and I shouldn't show bias, but I think we'll be seeing more trophies won by the Dolphins going into the trophy cabinet this year?"

"Yes sir," agreed Principal Porter. "The football, basketball and girls' field hockey teams are all unbeaten so far."

"Excellent, excellent, that's what I like to see," said Superintendent Simmonds. "Now, let's go and see that charming young teacher Miss Jones you introduced me to earlier."

"Yes Superintendent," said the Principal. He turned to Humphrey. "Grim, remove those questions from the blackboard in case any student should think those questions genuine."