Trader Gatlin Feels the Sting of Wife Scorned

Denver’s infamous would-be wife-trader arrived home from Chicago Sunday and faced 29 unfriendly people.

The Anti-Jim Gatlin Club carried picket signs and threw whipped-cream pies to unwelcome him at the airport.

“I don’t understand,” Gatlin said to the irate group of friends and relatives. “Why is she mad at me?”

Gatlin’s wife, Sharon, had taken exception to the way he was soliciting a ticket to the Super Bowl.

Gatlin ran an advertisement in a Denver newspaper, offering to trade his “non-cooking, non-shopping wife with attitude problem” to anyone willing to give up a ticket to Sunday’s Super Bowl game at San Diego.

Gatlin later explained that his wife had refused to go grocery shopping, citing icy roads, and had sent him instead.

In response to his ad, Sharon Gatlin organized Sunday’s protest committee--a group of friends and relatives who had all felt the sting of Gatlin’s offbeat sense of humor at one time or another.

Gatlin’s ad has generated more than 750 calls, Sharon estimated, and some respondents have taken it seriously.

“How did this get out of proportion?” Gatlin asked. “I just wanted to go to the Super Bowl.”

He still doesn’t have tickets.