hen pecked or not...you be the judge.

My father's friends tell him that he's hen pecked by my mother, an accusation she strongly refutes. Here's an example that she uses to deny that she's not a hen pecker; instead she's just standing up for herself and her yard...something like that...

After building a giant garage (see the picture above) in our back yard, my father set to building a smaller shed on the other side of the yard. He and his friend worked on it all day and finally got it all set up. Later that day, my sister Mary saw the shed, and the only thing that uttered forth from her was, "Momma's not going to like that."

My mother arrived home that evening and asked how the shed turned out. Mary said ominously, "Uh, you better go look at it." My mother and Mary went outside with a flashlight and were horrified to find out that they couldn't see the top of the shed, even with the flashlight. Turns out that the shed was 10 feet wide and long, but over 20 feet tall!!! I'm not sure if my mother cried, but she did come in and say, to me in a non-hen-pecked way, "Jim, that just won't DO. You KNEW I wouldn't like that." I kidded, at my father's 70th birthday party this April, when my mother recounted this tale, that that shed could've been used to store grain or hang tobacco.

Well, the shed was trimmed down the next day, and is now as you see it in the picture above.

Final "hen pecked?" verdict? The men vote "yes," and the women vote "no."

Oh, and a hen-pecked related joke my father likes to tell:

"I'm so hen pecked that when I go to the bathroom at night, I put my foot in the toilet and pee down the side of my leg, so that I won't wake Jane!"

That's bad, Daddy. Bad Daddy.