The Bacon Incident

Sometime during the last spring I would ever spend with my husband, I had to once again go to my dad's house due to another altercation. The morning after the night we spent there, the kids and I were served a very nice breakfast that consisted of fruit, eggs, pancakes, and bacon. The kids had never had bacon before and they loved it!

The reason they had never had it, was because bacon wasn't allowed in our home. No pork of any kind was ever brought into our home.
Was there some religious reason? No.
Did someone have an allergy? No.
Weight watching? No. My husband believes that pigs are nasty, non-sweating animals and therefore made a unilateral decision for our family.

The kids asked me if I could buy some bacon so they could have it at home. I hesitated in my mind at first, knowing that I couldn't because of the "no pork" rule. But then I got defiant inside and thought, "This is crazy. I don't have a reason to tell them no. I don't have a problem with it. Why can't I buy bacon? Who died and made him the boss of what we ingest?" So I told the kids that I would get some the next time we went shopping.

Well, the next time came a day or two after we returned home to what was supposed to be a repentant man. At the supermarket together as a family and all is well. We passed the bacon. I picked one out and put it in the cart and kept it moving like it was normal, because it should have been.

He saw the bacon. 

Here's where our nice family time begins to come to an end. He asked me what was I doing and why was "that," in the cart? I explained to him that the kids had some over my dad's house, liked it and asked me to buy it and that I told them yeah, no big deal. Now for most normal people, that would be the end of it, (well, most normal people wouldn't ask about it to begin with.).
But that was just the beginning for him.

He continued on. I reminded him that if you live by the 80/20 rule and ate a good diet 80% of the time, the other 20% would have very little impact on your health. But that wasn't good enough for him. He kept going and going.......all the way to the register. I loaded up the groceries on the conveyor belt as the growing argument continued. Suddenly, he snatched the bacon off and threw it to the side of the register. I was on high alert and could feel myself trembling as the adrenaline surged through my body.

I started to be obedient and just leave it there....but oh.....there's a fighter in me! I picked up the bacon and put it back. The argument escalated as the bacon was rung up. The argument continued out the store, across the parking lot, into the car. He was yelling and cursing and being his usual ugly self. The now very loud argument continued on the drive home and into the house. I don't remember any of it. 99% of the arguments he started were so stupid, pointless, and petty, I can't even tell you what they were about. I didn't know why they were happening!

I don't remember clearly what happened once we got home, but I knew instinctively, that it was about to get violent. I don't remember how I got all of the children out of the house so quickly without him stopping us, which is what he usually did. But somehow the children and I were down the stairs, out the door and in the car in seconds. I drove to the church. It was a Friday night and the youth service was going on and so was the support group I attended.

After I parked and was crossing the street with the children, walking toward the church, one of the marriage counselors that was working with us, happened to be driving by. He leaned out his window, with his customary huge smile and said in his usual cheerful way, "Hey, what's going on?"

Still in disbelief about what had just happened, I looked at him, shook my head and said, "Bacon."