See: Why We Need Cell Phones: Also Related to Divorce Rate: Squirrel Skinning Kit.

I realized while Joey and I were witnesses to the near divorce due to a bag cell phone, this is not the moment my parents remember as near divorce. Theirs is related to recovering a chair, which we like to call “The Squirrel Skinning Incident”.

Here’s the background: One day, some time ago, my grandpa shot a squirrel and asked my grandma to help him skin it so they could cook it up and eat it. Now squirrels, I hear, are tricky to skin. It involves something like nailing the tail to a tree so you can pull down on both sides of its body. The pulling needs to be very exact, or you’ll rip the skin and cause terrible squirrel skinning issues. My grandma starts telling him, “You’re pulling too fast”, he replies “You’re not pulling hard enough”. Back and forth until I’m sure the squirrel was never eaten, and it was a divorce or death situation. This squirrel will live in infamy in my family as the moment my grandparents almost killed each other, but didn’t, and realized their marriage could survive anything.

My parents experienced their squirrel moment while trying to recover a chair. Incredibly similar to a squirrel, recovering a chair means pulling the fabric to exactly the same tension before stapling it down. The story goes they both had hammers, but survived the incident.

Whether it’s a family curse or destiny of man-kind, I have been waiting for my squirrel moment ever since learning of its powers. Once J and I tried to assemble Ikea furniture together, but it just didn’t feel quite squirrel worthy.