The Forbidden Purchase

It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Whoever came up with that saying wasn’t married—or wasn’t for long. That’s the kind of logic that leads to your wife telling investigators she doesn’t know anything about your mysterious disappearance. Kindly disregard her muddy shoes. I admit, however, that it’s a saying I’ve taken to heart at great risk to my well-being. I live my life in the gray zone of activities that my wife, Lola, hasn’t explicitly forbidden but also clearly wouldn’t go along with if I told her about them. My first pig fit those criteria. Lola forbade me from buying a house swine, but she never specifically said I couldn’t get one for free. It’s permission by omission. The initiative is on my side because there’s no way for Lola to anticipate all the weird and inadvisable things I’ll suddenly decide are a great idea. I use my creativity solely for evil.

Facebook Marketplace has sent my love of chaos into overdrive. Now I have a cheap, extremely sketchy way to get all the things we don’t need and probably shouldn’t have. The website doesn’t sell animals—yet—but it has everything else, usually provided by someone with an obviously fake profile who’s looking to steal my money if I’m lucky and my kidneys if I’m not. After getting scammed out of $200 for a non-existent Xbox Series X, I decided to only buy things I could only pick up in person, which protected my money but not my life and the organs that sustain it. Recently, my daily scouring of Facebook Marketplace yielded some items I knew Lola wouldn’t like. But they weren’t for her; they were for the kids. “It’s for the children” is the ultimate get-out-of-guilt free card. Disclaimer: That’s never been tested in court, and I’m the exact opposite of a lawyer. Regardless, I pulled the trigger without consulting Lola or anyone else. Up front, it seemed cheap, but it could end up being the most expensive deal of my life if it ends in divorce.