Kory

My husband is the kind of guy who wears socks with holes in them.  When I try to toss them out, he grabs them back and tells me he can rotate them and wear them a few more times before they are ready for the trash.  He looks at it as a way of getting more for his money.  As if he’s earning interest on the money he would spend buying new socks, and that interest percent increases each time he gets an extra wear out of them.  I understand his logic, but it still drives me crazy.  Because it’s not just his socks where he applies this line of thinking. 

So imagine trying to buy a Christmas gift for someone like that.  He doesn’t think he needs anything, not even new socks.   If something breaks, he fixes it. If something new comes on the market, he convinces himself he doesn’t need it.  His goal in life is to not spend money.  He leaves that up to me.  Personally, I think he wants to believe life is free and if he doesn’t see how much I shell out on groceries or paying utility bills, he lives in a happy little utopia where the money never leaves our house.  

Each month I give him a hundred dollar bill to put in his wallet in case he needs anything and I’m not around to pay for it.  Often, that hundred will stay in his wallet for months on end.

Lucky for him, I’m pretty tight with a buck, too, or we might have some serious issues.  One time, when we were particularly low on cash, we had a contest to see who could go the longest without spending a dime – outside of the obvious bills that had to be paid.  I got very creative with my dinner menus and in the end I won because he needed to buy gas for the car to go somewhere.  But the challenge went on for weeks and it was kinda fun while it lasted.  Turns out we don’t need as much stuff as we think we do.

If I buy Kory any kind of clothing item for Christmas, he takes it back, telling me his closet is full and he already has more clothes than he can possibly wear.  The fact he’s been wearing some of them since the 1970s is a moot point for him.  If they still fit, he wears them.  Thank goodness he had some decent clothes back then and I’m not stuck looking at polyester sage green leisure suits with cream pick stitch.

If I buy Kory any kind of tool, he takes it back because he has enough tools and he’s figured out how to do everything he needs to do with the tools he already has.  He’s a great improviser, that way.  He often makes me gifts with just scrap material he has lying around.  He’s extremely proud of himself if he doesn’t have to buy a thing to complete it.  One year for Christmas I got a rock.  It was cool though because he’d drilled a hole halfway through it and cut the bottom off so it sat flat and works great as a vase.   I think that idea might have come from his socks.