Do I Win a Quarter?

I'm just a dirty white boy (dirty white boy)
Dirty white boy (dirty white boy)
I'm a dirty white boy
A dirty white boy

"Would you agree that he's a dirty white boy?" I asked Sue about the song playing in a record store the other day. "Why can't I figure out who this is?"

"Foreigner!" Sue replied. "Do I win a quarter?"

For reasons unknown, Sue will sporadically display her knowledge of a random factoid then ask if she's won one-fourth of a dollar. There's no pattern to her question surfacing, but when she dusts it off, it's typically because she knows something I do not.

"I don't remember us betting a quarter," I replied, causing her momentary, semi-mock dissatisfaction.

In the past, Sue would ask that we make an official bet for a quarter, but these days she instead demands one in the form of a question as a reward for her wisdom. It obviously wouldn't be a significant loss if I indulged this infrequent need and provided her a financial incentive for recalling sporadic bits of information. Yet when we watched Jeopardy! later that night, Final Jeopardy! offered the following answer: "It's the only independent survivor of the Spanish March buffer states created to protect Christian Europe from the Moors."

"Andorra," I announced between eggplant parmigiana chomps.

Sue took a bite of her pickle, sarcastically irked that I bought one to split rather than one for each of us, while theme music played, and the contestants scribbled on their blue screens. The irony of the third-place finisher raking in $999.75 more than Sue had hoped to win earlier in the day went unsaid. Ken Jennings announced that Andorra was correct.

"How the fuck did you know it was Andorra?"

"I just guessed."

"Yeah, right."

"I swear I did!"

And I never asked for a dime.

We'd gotten some fresh produce during the afternoon, including two oblong, yellow Korean melons. I grabbed a paper bag containing mine along with accompanying peaches and blueberries.

"What's the actual name of this melon?" I said.

"It's a Korean yellow melon."

"That's it? No way! It has a real name."

"Dude, nuh-uh!"

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I took a walk the following afternoon—A Tribe Called Quest rapped in my headphones about not eating ham and eggs due to the high cholesterol content, a funny jam I'd forgotten about—and arrived at Sue's workplace to say hello. We looped around the property, home to a three-legged plastic alligator I’d never noticed, and chatted for a few minutes.

"You were right," I shamefully disclosed. "That fruit is called a Korean yellow melon."

"I FUCKING TOLD YOU!" Sue authoritatively said.

Yet she didn't demand a quarter for her foreign fruit knowledge. Quite an odd development, especially for a woman who brings a baby's foot-sized mock Chuck Taylor zip-up coin purse-slash-sneaker full of quarters with her to use on parking meters whenever we travel.

While riding my exercise bike yesterday, I spotted a sparkling quarter near the Tide Pods bag beside the washing machine.

"Have a freshly washed 2021 'Crossing the Delaware' quarter with your name on it as a mea culpa for that whole Korean yellow melon dust-up that'll never be spoken of again, so say we all," I texted her along with a photo proving said coin had been bookmarked for her collection.

"I haven't won a quarter in quite some time so I'm excited that a random fruit without a proper name broke the streak."

Some people use pregnancy or therapy or threesomes to save the relationship. Me? I typically scrounge under the passenger's seat for twenty-five cent pieces Sue has mistakenly left behind, returning them to her like the humble lesser half that I am.

"Here's your Korean yellow melon quarter," I'll tell her while placing it in her gloating palm.

"About damn time," she'll think while graciously accepting it with her chin pointed slightly upward and eyes humorously darting around to indicate her international fruit fact supremacy.

"So...you wanna make out in the credit union parking lot or bribe a Brinks driver to use the back of his truck?" I'll ask her while a Foreigner compilation conveniently rests on the passenger seat in my car.

"Either option works," she'll say, "but let's find a gumball machine first." 

If she knew where to locate one in advance, would she request a minor wager be placed regarding its whereabouts? I wouldn't bet on it.