Paper No More

After so many years of moving at the whim of a corporate regime, Ol Abner became quite a talented wallpaper hanger.  With limited time to make a move, we often overlooked cosmetic deficits in a potential home.  If the furniture would fit and the kids could stash their stuff out of sight, we could look past wallpaper that looked like old men's pajamas.  Before we even moved in I was usually checking out wallpaper sample books to pour over for each room.  He knew a couple of weekends would be spent painting and papering, sometimes in a rush before new flooring was installed.   Before he assumed the role of paper-hanger,  I tackled a couple of simple papering projects with a modicum of success.

One newly-finished house we bought  had what looked like grandma's housecoat on the master bathroom wall.  My frugal spouse refused to change out brand new wall paper, thus I lived with it for several years.  When he was traveling I found a sale and bought new paper after a reasonable time of suffering the ugly environment,  Dancing girl dropped by one evening and after a glass of wine, we concluded we could remove the offensive paper and replace it with a fresh new covering in one evening.  

Just as we began to coax the old paper off the wall, Ol' Abner called.  We usually chatted five or ten minutes each evening when he was away.  It didn't take long to catch up on most day's events.  This particular evening, he suggested I call him back when my guest left.  Now he knew it always took the two of us several hours to "catch up" on any day's  events.  I told him it would probably be late, and he assured me he had enough paper work to do that he'd be awake for some time.  I hung up the phone and we went back to work.  Forty five minutes later he called. Paper work was done and he was sure I  had just forgotten to call him.  No, but I was willing to chat as my friend steamed the walls.  Mind you he didn't know she was slaving in our bathroom. He again told me to call when we were through with our visit.   His calls became closer and closer together, to the point that he was totally disrupting our progress.  A project that could have been completed by midnight stretched into the wee hours and we had to leave the medicine cabinets for him to re-install.  Every time he called we would sit down where the phone cord would reach and have another glass of wine. If something was of great importance, he never did get around to that point in any of those conversations.  He was never fond of that wallpaper, but it really was lovely.

He remarked recently that he is so glad that wallpapered walls are no longer in vogue. I do hope it hasn't taken him fourteen years to notice we aren't buying wallpaper.