beamjockey | A Conversation in Front of the Television

My wife, bless her, loves action movies. When she's working at home on a Sunday afternoon, she'll switch on TV and dial around the cable channels. Now cable channels like to repeat certain movies fairly often; I suppose these are the popular ones. K will always stop on a channel if it has the action-packed latterday The Mummy or one of its sequels. At a frantic pace, protagonists are chased around, attacked by lots of bad guys, and menaced by monsters. She finds this a comfort.

Sometimes I tease her about this. I've lost count of the number of times she's seen The Mummy, and I think she has, too.

Today I came into the room, and observed that The Mummy Returns¹ was onscreen. "Another Mummy movie, eh?" I said.

"And the first Mummy movie is on another channel right now!" she announced, knowing that the idea would amuse me.

"So it's just like that well-known children's book!" I said.

I think she rolled her eyes, but after all these years of marriage,² she knows what she's expected to say.

"Which well-known children's book?"

"Heather Has Two Mummies!"

1. As my father would say, "I didn't even know he was away!"

2. For another Mummy-related husband-wife exchange, see this Usenet posting.