The business trip

The Prissy Princess and the Gallant Hero faced a crisis in their short marriage: a business trip. The service of the kingdom called the Hero to a far-off land, a land where gangs of road bandits called Boston Drivers terrorize naive pedestrians and out-of-town drivers. But since the Hero's business would be conducted primarily indoors and require only foot travel -- from hotel room to conference room to food court, which was conveniently accessed via underground tunnel -- the Princess was not overly worried about road bandits. The real concern on her mind was: Who would kill the spiders at home while the Hero was gone? And, what would the Hero's attire look like when the Princess was not there to advise him?

To deal with the spiders and other creepy crawlies, the Princess utilized a time-honored method traditionally used by males: She simply didn't look for them. And when she did see them, she conveniently forgot that she saw them. This worked so well that she wondered why she hadn't thought of it sooner. The answer: She is not a male. As soon as the Hero returned to the castle, no doubt she would automatically revert to her natural behavior of ferreting out anything with more than two legs, screaming loudly for the Hero to do his hero-ly thing and take care of it. But for now, the technique worked quite nicely.

As to the the Hero's grooming, the Prissy Princess could only hope that, with everyone else's wife staying home like herself, the convention attendees would all look alike and no one would notice if, for instance, any of them wore white socks with black shoes and blue pants or forgot to put on their socks entirely. She thought it best not to ask the Hero what he had worn each day, although she did make a careful check of his suitcase before he left, surreptitiously replacing a few items that -- if worn on the Hero's person at the same time -- might spontaneously combust in protest against bad fashion.

The Princess congratulated herself that things seemed to go smoothly both on the home front and for the Hero far away. Little did the Princess know that her real worries would start when it was her turn to join the Hero in that far-away land for a long weekend.

Next: Getting around Boston (while keeping your sanity)