Lost Bet Over Euro Soccer Cup. Wife Pays With Sore Bottom, Knees and Lips

Dear 1950s Wife:

Being an All-American 1950s-style couple, my husband and I prefer football, baseball, professional wrestling and other manly competitions when watching sports on TV.

But with our city's Major League Baseball team playing poorly -- we're Cubs fans, need I say more -- we decided to give the recent Euro Cup soccer tournament a look.

Soccer sure is easy to watch. Unlike football and baseball's complicated rules and confusing statistics that are so difficult for we women to follow, all that matters in soccer is whether the ball goes in the net. And with so few goals to keep track of, even a mathematically-challenged girl like me can remember the score.

And I must say that soccer players, in the main, are really sexy, even if they do act like sorority girls on bid night with the way they kiss and hug each other after every goal.

My husband was bored with the tournament at first. To liven it up, I suggested we choose a team to root for. After doing quick research on the computer, my husband picked Spain.

I'm not allowed to use the computer except to read this blog, as my husband knows I'd waste time Facebooking and Twittering when I should be cooking his meals and cleaning his clothes. So, knowing nothing about the teams, I chose Holland because the players are the cutest.

As a further twist, we agreed to give each other gifts if our respective teams made it from the “group stage” to the "knock-out rounds." My husband’s gift was that he got to spank my bottom cherry red for Spain making it to the quarter-finals and for each successive win thereafter.

Plus every time Spain played in the knock-out stage, I had to kneel before my husband giving him head the whole game. He got to come in my mouth each time Spain scored a goal.

If Netherlands made it to the quarter-finals, my present was that we'd order pizza one-night-per-year to give me a break from cooking. And if Holland won the tournament, a new vacuum cleaner!

Boy oh boy, how can such fit-looking guys play so bad? I really wanted that new vacuum cleaner, but Netherlands lost its three games in the group stage and didn’t advance. And not that I'm begrudging Spain its Euro Cup, but I've got a sore bottom, sore knees and sore lips and I don't even have pizza night to look forward to.

But the worst part is that watching the tournament left my husband so infatuated with soccer that he's growing a "Euro-style" ponytail to symbolize his love of the game and its European players.

As my husband wears his hair in a flat top, his ponytail will take several months to grow. In the meantime, he's fashioned a crude wig made with bandages, black-tip felt pen and a faux fur tail he tore off a souvenir "Davy Crocket coonskin cap" he wore as a boy.

As an adherent of the 1950s lifestyle, I know I must support my husband in his fashion choices and sporting interests. But it’s hard to retain a proper submissive mindset when my husband’s wears such a frightful wig.

I couldn’t help giggling while my husband’s scolded me this evening about poor housekeeping -- I forgot to dust the knickknacks in his “man cave” – when I briefly raised my eyes during the lecture and saw his faux fur ponytail wagging back and forth as he shook his index finger at me. (I got spanked extra hard for laughing.)

Even though his hair will grow out, I don’t care for the Euro-ponytail look. And I was really looking forward to watching the Bears play this fall. Now my husband wants to spend our autumn Sunday afternoons at an out-of-the-way saloon in the city with a bunch of expat Spaniards watching Real Madrid play soccer on pay TV.

Whatever am I to do?

Good woman:

You correctly note that the good wife cheers for her husband, no matter how regrettable his hairstyle. While European men generally have good fashion sense, the “Euro ponytail” is an exception to the rule.

Personally, I wouldn’t consider it a sacrifice to swap watching the Bears for Real Madrid playing soccer on pay TV. I much prefer the rest of the world’s version of “football” to America’s. But my husband considers pay TV, even basic cable service, a waste of money, even though the demise of “Friday Night Fights” on network TV means he no longer enjoys his beloved boxing matches.

But take heart. Though their passions run deep, men’s attention spans are short.

It’s nearly two months before Real Madrid begins a new season defending its La Liga championship and I expect your husband will grow bored waiting. This fall, I’m confident you’ll find him on Sunday afternoons wearing his flat top haircut and Bears jersey sitting before the TV with beer can in hand and rooting for “Da Barez.”