"Oh, look how pretty."

My wife picked up this delicate little fragile figurine at one of those cutesy little stores that sell pricey household decorating type items. They have these little breakable items placed on shelves and they're sometimes in very precarious positions that make it difficult to pick up one without risking catching your sleeve or something on another one and accidentally dragging it off the shelf and breaking it.

I hate fragile little breakable items because they're, well, breakable. Each one is a potential disaster, an accident waiting to happen. So I have a personal rule about them - "Don't Touch."

That's it. That's my rule.

If I go into a store with my wife and there are little breakable items, I put both hands in my pockets and I stay as far away from the shelves as possible because little breakable items make me nervous and when I get nervous, I'm likely to break something. I'm like the proverbial bull in the china shop.

My wife apparently also has a rule about being around little breakable items - "Pick Them Up And Examine Them More Closely."

I can't tell you how crazy this makes me.

It doesn't matter how small, or fragile, or expensive, the item is, if it's something she's interested in, she's going to pick it up despite my great angst.

She does this even though there are warning signs all over the place about touching the little breakable items. There's the "Handle Items At Your Own Risk" sign and the more direct "Don't Touch" warning, or my personal favorite, "You Break It, You Bought It!"

But none of these deter my wife from reaching across fragile glass shelves and picking up these expensive little breakable items and turning them over and around in her hands, examining their overpriced intricacy while I stand there holding my breath dreadfully anticipating the "oops" that might come and then watching the expensive little breakable item fall to the floor (which, by the way is always hardwood - you'd think if one owned a store full of little breakable items, one would at least have the common sense to install thick carpeting of some type) where it disintegrates. Security guards then immediately rush to the scene, spray you with mace and while you're writhing around on the floor in agony, they remove your wallet, then pick you and your wife up and toss you out into the street where rich and snooty passers-by point and giggle.

"Look," the passers-by will say. "There are some more hillbillies who couldn't resist touching the expensive little breakable items. When will they ever learn?"

This is the fear that overpowers me when going with my wife into a store that has these kinds of items. I try to tell her.

"Honey," I'll say, "please, please be careful."

She will give me one of those "shut up and stand over there" looks and reach for the little breakable items anyway.

Sometimes I will try to be more demanding about it.

"Do NOT pick that up," I will say in a stern voice. "We would have to sell everything we own to pay for it if you drop it and break it."

"I'm not going to drop it," she will insist, rolling her eyes at me.

Then I will try to reason with her.

"Listen dear," I will say in a pleading pathetic husbandly sort of way. "I love you and I know you wouldn't INTENTIONALLY drop it. NOBODY ever INTENTIONALLY drops anything. Dropped items are almost always dropped ACCIDENTALLY. Nevertheless, if you drop it and break it, we have to pay for it." Alas, this strategy also doesn't work. "I told you," she will reply. "I'm NOT going to drop it."

So I give up.

"OK, fine," I say. "But you see these signs all over the place warning people about touching these items? Why do you think they put those signs there? I'll tell you why. Because at some point in the past somebody - probably somebody who just told their husband that they weren't going to drop some little breakable item - did in fact drop one of them. That's why. Now I'm going outside."

"Why are you going outside?" she will ask.

"So I can try and catch you after you get maced and tossed out of the store," I tell her.

(Klonie Jordan is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger. You can contact him via e-mail at editor@gaffneyledger.com)