NFL Cheerleaders visited husbands base during his time in theater

Sep 25 Written By Susie's Halo

My husband called to me from under the family minivan I drove everyday as his wife and mother of his children, “Get me my ratchet.”

I'm not fond of this game of ‘find my tools' and I can’t help but wonder why tool finding takes so long when he does these projects. It has yet to fail, if he is doing a DIY project he will at one point ask me to find something he needs and I’m left stumped and comically trying to find his missing piece.

I call out, “Where can I find them? I wait for his answer and I can feel his annoyance that I can’t produce the shiny tool he doesn’t have. Finally, he calls out from under the van, “In my toolbox.” Yuck I think as I walk towards the garage we built together in the rain when the insurance company said we had to fix it. He used it as his dumping grounds for all things handy.

I stepped inside his garage and felt skeeved out because the cobwebs were touching my skin. I can’t see and the door is impossible to fully open. I look in his garage and begin to scurry around in the dark wishing to see a silver shiny tool I'm assuming he has me searching for.

Suddenly my eyes stop on his duffel bag from his 2nd deployment. I recognize it immediately and I’m taken back to the sense of dread that flushed over me when he told me he was leaving for deployment.

I can't put my finger on why it bothered me but the fact that the bag was still in the garage unpacked after 3 months of being home unnerved me. In the literary sense this felt like foreshadowing if my life was a novel but my mind failed to uncover what it meant and what must be inside that he wanted to keep tucked away.

I stepped out of the garage and saw he had not moved but was surrounded under our van with tools I presumed were not the ratchets. I smiled thinking how smart he was laying on brown cardboard to protect himself from the pavement with his boots peeking out the front bumper. I had no clue what automotive mystery had captured his attention this time.

He wasn’t the type to patiently explain the how’s and the whys and this was something I had already learned early in the relationship. The plus side was he got shit done but the down side was I could never be part of it.

Well unless I was okay with the past 4 years of me fetching tools and stuff he misplaced. The other thing he has me do is clean up.

At some point don’t I graduate to a power tool demo to see if I can use one? I wanted to be part of our DIY home adventures but he was so grumpy and I had so many questions that I had to leave it alone.

I'd been his tool fetcher and clean up girl for 4 years at this point and he hadn’t even taught me how to swing a hammer. It felt off.

He heard me approach and must’ve sensed I was about to desert the mission so he said look in my truck. I sighed in frustration and began to sift through a cluttered mess on his passenger side of his truck.

He really ate out was my 1st thought. Ever since I met him the 1st thing he asks is if I wanna get something to eat every time we drive together. A few minutes pass and I finish what I believe is a thorough search of this truck for his mystery tool when it occurs the tool could be under his seat.

Kneeling beside his truck I leaned in and peered beneath his seat. I lost my breath when I saw a shiny package. I reached my hand under the driver seat and slowly tugged out a thick packet wrapped in clear plastic.

The packet made its way into my view was a large photo of an NFL cheerleading team. My heart sank and I was puzzled by my discovery, there in my hands were glossy photographs of signed cheerleader pictures and individual photos of 2 of them.

Thanks for the awesome photo: Scotty Turner@thinkscotty

I felt a pang of heart break as I noticed how their eyes were sparkling. Their bodies were full of the captivating possession of their youth. I thought I recognized the iconic blue and white uniforms and wondered if they paid a visit during my husband's deployment to Bagram.

In all my years he didn’t show an interest in sports or football. I would’ve never believed my husband would stand in line to get these pictures let alone watch an entire show they performed and get to speak with them. I remember thinking he paid extra for the individual photos. So many questions raced through my mind and I knew none of them were going to elicit a positive reaction from my husband and the kids were in the house so I decided to walk right into the house knowing he was under the van.

I entered my house and both kids were watching tv coloring pictures so I hid the packet under my shoebox in our bedroom closet and asked if they wanted to visit their grandma or their aunt and they picked good ol’gma they do every time. I called my mother and told her I was going to have words with my husband and needed her to hold the kids until I did. She was glad to have them and I quickly got the kids ready and out the door with swim trunks in super speed as our oldest used to call it.

He didn’t even get out from under the truck of the car as I buckled them in for the journey to my moms. While I drove, holding the wheel tear welled up in my eyes as my kids chatted in the back of his truck oblivious to my emotional turmoil. I asked myself over and over what I should do with these pictures or see if he would bring it up. I was curious to see how long it would take him to look and for what purpose it would serve when he did choose to look at them. Did he use them when I was out with the kids carting them from one enriching activity to the next? Why didn’t he just tell me hey I met these NFL cheerleaders? Why would he not want me to be happy for him? The fact that he hid it and had an entire event surrounded by their appearance made me so frustrated as a wife. Then to obtain glossy signed photos of girls in cheerleader uniforms, several of them that formed a thick packet and hid it under his drivers seat was so off putting to me.

We arrived at my mother’s and the kids rushed inside eager to share their day with their favorite person. I took a deep breath, trying to collect my thoughts. My mom sensed my unease and gave me a knowing look. I kissed them all goodbye and drove back filled with more questions and emotions.

When I arrived home I found him cleaning out the van. He threw his arms up when he saw me, I wasn’t sure what that meant. I got out of the car and he told me we needed a new van. I was stumped because he could fix everything but apparently every vehicle has their finish date. I walked through the door leaving him outside and a sense of unease washed over me. The house felt different, as if an unspoken tension lingered in the air. How long until he finds his cheerleading wank bank missing? I walked to my bedroom to see if he had opened the closet door and I was right to hide them in there.

Feeling defeated I jumped on my pillows at the head of our bed that was pushed up against our front windows and looked out our bedroom windows. I was wondering what he was doing so I pulled the curtains back just for an eyehole and I saw him closing up the van and walking towards his pickup truck. He seemed to be closely inspecting his truck for signs I changed something and sure as day I watched him reach under his seat as if he was expecting to feel his thick packet but couldn’t touch it. His face frowned and I knew he was at that point determined that there was a packet there under the seat but he could not find it by touch so he ducked under just as I had done 3 hours ago and he emerged with a dumbfounded scowl set as I watched him process the thought that he had hopefully put it somewhere else. He immediately went into his garage and I jumped into the shower to think about my next move.

Thanks to Jacky Zeng @jacky_zeng who created this perfect shot!

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