Occasions on which spousal abuse is appropriate

... or "He did say medium".

Many people do not know this, but Bowling Green, Ohio (the small college town in which I spent my teens and the hazier part of my twenties) is proud home to the National Tractor Pulling Championships. Of course, if you can read the words on this page, you would have no reason to know that.

Tractor pull weekend was always the most exciting time to be a Wendy's employee, especially since it often coincided with college move-in weekend. For three consecutive days, the restaurant overflowed with drooling hillbillies and confused, miserable, eighteen year-olds.

But let us forget about those at least attempting higher education for the moment, and focus on the real spectacles of this 72-hour nightmare; the tractor pull fans. Hour after hour, families of inbred stereotypes poured through the door and demanded to be fed in their most sophisticated series of grunts. The sheer number of morbidly obese, barking mothers, waif-like, indentured fathers, 16 year-old girls cradling the youngest of their own offspring, comically retarded-looking elderly (sunglasses with one lens missing and completely mismatched shoes and socks) and a myriad filthy children polluting our dining area was truly mindblowing. But it did make for some smashing stories when I got home from work each day.

During a rare slow period one afternoon, I took the opportunity to make sense of the dining room, which, courtesy of the devolved nature of our guests, had been transformed into a cluster of abandoned zoo cages. Glancing out the window, I noticed a rusty heap careen into the parking lot, supported on tires approximately the height of my garage.
"Georgia plates", I thought to myself. "Awesome".

As I made my way back to the register, in walked a couple of ridiculously stereotypical mouth-breathing types. The husband was a monster of a man; a 6' 5" , long-haired, biker-mustachioed, oily, boot-stompin', shit-kickin', what-r-u-lookin-at-fagit monster. The wife, probably in her mid-thirties, was petite, yet sassy, and dressed like a particularly slutty teenager. I awaited the worst.

Surprisingly, the majority of their meal was ordered without incident. Then we approached the topic of dessert, and everything changed.

"…and a medium Frosty", the barbarian declared in a deep, sinister voice.
"Make it a large", interposed his wife, eyebrow cocked and head tilted in such a way as to demonstrate she meant business.
My finger hovered over the two buttons. This is precisely the sort of dispute I didn’t want to have to deal with. I glanced up at the husband, and detected no desire to compromise.
"I said medium." He stared at me coldly, as Death himself might, before relieving me of my very breath with his bony hand.
"Laaarge", the woman, half whined, half-shouted. At this point, she almost had my admiration, as I wouldn’t think of disagreeing with this brute unless it was in a whisper, and from hundreds of miles away.

And then it all turned ugly. Without hesitation, he struck her squarely in the middle of the back with the heel of his hand. Probably not hard enough to cause any lasting damage, but hard enough to thrust her forward a foot or two, and cry out from the pain.

At that moment, the temperature in the restaurant dropped a good thirty degrees, and the ensuing silence was more ominous than most.
"I said medium."
Although he had just repeated this phrase (this time in even lower tones), there was a certain finality in his voice. The size of the Frosty was no longer open for discussion.

"Medium it is, then!", I nervously quipped, and scurried away to the Frosty machine.

That was the last tractor pull weekend I agreed to work.