Newlyweds in the fifties had not heard about setting boundaries in relationships.\u00a0 When we married in 1955, we lived in a garage apartment within walking distance of the university where I was taking summer classes.\u00a0 My husband took a job as a roustabout for an oil company to support us until his teaching job began in the fall.\u00a0 Every day he took his lunch in a black domed top lunch box\u00a0typical at that time.\u00a0 We soon established a routine.\u00a0 He immediately showered when he came home from work while I finished preparing supper.\u00a0 Part of my routine also included cleaning his lunch box and getting it ready for the next day.<\/p>\n
One of his favorites for lunch was what he called fried pies.\u00a0 I thought that he was expecting too much if he thought that I was going to make fried pies every day.\u00a0 He explained that his mother made them and that they were not the traditional fruit filled fried pies.\u00a0 She told me how to make them. \u00a0I soon mastered the simple process of rolling\u00a0biscuit dough very thin, putting some cinnamon sugar dotted with butter in the center, folding the dough over and crimping the edges like the traditional pies.\u00a0\u00a0I then browned them on both sides in butter.\u00a0 These were simple to make and kept well in the lunch box in the Texas heat.<\/p>\n
One day after finishing his lunch, he glanced over at a pile of sand.\u00a0 On impulse, he filled his lunch box with sand and closed it.\u00a0 That afternoon he came home, set his lunch box on the kitchen table and proceeded to the shower.\u00a0 When I opened the lunch box to clean, I was surprised to say the least.\u00a0 I dumped the sand in the trash, washed out the lunch box, and finished preparing our meal.<\/p>\n
During the meal and all during the evening, neither of us said a word about the sand.\u00a0 The next morning as he left for work he picked up his lunch box with the usual lunch.\u00a0 At lunch time he finished his sandwiches and started on a fried pie.\u00a0 He had taken a big bite of a pie before he realized that it was made with salt instead of sugar.<\/p>\n
Again, nothing was said about sand or salt as each of us waited for the other to be the first to say something.\u00a0 Several years passed and both of us forgot about the incident.\u00a0 One evening we were with friends sharing early marriage experiences when he told about it. It has now been added to the family lore and gives our children and grandchildren a good laugh.<\/p>\n
In those days it was called getting even.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Newlyweds in the fifties had not heard about setting boundaries in relationships. When we married in 1955, we lived in a garage apartment within walking distance of the university where I was taking summer classes. My husband took a job as a roustabout for an oil company to support us until his teaching job began […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[66,67,68],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1955-to-1972","category-uncategorized","tag-early-marriage-pranks","tag-getting-even-after-pracitcal-joke","tag-setting-boundaries-in-early-marriage"],"yoast_head":"\n