What a Difference Six Months Can Make!

One day a woman went to see her lawyer.

“I want you to draw up divorce papers for me,” she begged in desperation. “I have put up with my husband as long as I possibly can, but I can't go on like this any longer! I am married to the most despicable, mean, ornery, selfish person you've ever known, and I want you to make him pay for all the years of misery he has put me through!”

Her lawyer smiled and assured her that he could draw up the divorce papers right then. “But,” he cautioned the woman, “if you divorce your husband immediately, I suspect it won't cause him too much grief. He'll probably be just as happy to see you go.”

“On the other hand,” he suggested, “if you could possibly endure another six months, I think I know how to make him really miserable.”

“What do I have to do?” the woman asked skeptically.

“Well, I suggest you spend the next six months really spoiling your husband,” the lawyer told her. “Do everything you can to make him happy. Make his favorite foods, keep the house spotless, agree with him in everything, tell him how wonderful he is, how much you admire him, and what a great man he is. Then, at the end of six months when he is totally convinced that he can't live without you, drop the bomb and tell him you are leaving him. It will devastate him!”

The woman thought about it for a little while, but she could see the wisdom in the lawyers advice, so she agreed. For the next six months she worked as hard as she could to spoil, baby, and butter-up her husband. She was as sweet and loving as it was possible for her to be, even going so far as to meet him at the front door every evening with his newspaper in one hand and his slippers in the other. She really laid it on thick.

At the end of six months the lawyer called the woman on the phone. “I have the papers all ready to serve your husband,” he told her confidentially. “When do you want to divorce him?”

“Divorce my husband?” the woman gasped in dismay. “No way! I would never let that man go. He has turned into the sweetest, kindest, most lovable husband in the world. Tear up the papers! I don't want a divorce!”

And so you see what a difference six months can make. And maybe a few other changes, as well.