My Husband, A Bum?

There's a grocery store nearby that sells a wide selection of imported $3 wines. None of them would win any awards, but on an occasional weeknight they do go very nicely with dinner; a treat we would never otherwise go in for.

Once I tried a sip of a $125 bottle of wine. I was at a nice restaurant with a good friend from grad school and we casually requested to see the wine list. Our waitress offered to bring us a sample of some wines, and amongst her array of libations was the $125 Pinot Gris.

It was a transcendental experience. I had never before been able to discern the difference between "cheap" wine and "good" wine (ranging from $5-35 dollars), but I still recall, with exquisite clarity, the ontologically higher value of that fermented blood of the grape.

We then proceeded to order the $2.50 a glass house wine, shielding ourselves from the fiery poison darts the waitress's eyes were shooting at us. We tipped her handsomely and called it good.

So anyway, last night my husband came home bearing a $3 bottle of Merlot and some asparagus.

"What's this for?" I asked, putting the asparagus away and glancing at our meal plan for a day to serve it.

"Oh... well... um... I'm wearing my irrigation boots, and I haven't shaved and... well, I didn't want to march right in, grab the $3 bottle of wine and pay for it in change, ya know? The cashier would've just said 'sure, sure' if I'd told her I was bringing it home for dinner. So I frantically looked around for anything and the asparagus was handy."

Sitting with my sweet husband, the bum, the $3 wine tasted remarkably similar to the $125.