Take My Wife

Marriage endows a man with certain knowledge.  This knowledge is of a very intimate sort.  It's the kind of knowledge about another human being that no one should know about another person, yet we do.  If it wasn't for marriage there are some things that we men would never know.  Never. Ever. That's the way that God wanted it.

God had the whole thing planned out in advance.  He knew that in order to take to entirely different bi-pods, with divergent personalities and core values and get them to live together, reproduce and raise offspring, He would have to do something special.  He would have to trick us.  So that's what He did.

Tricking the man was easy.  All that was required was boobs.  Well...and a nice butt.  Ok, we like the legs too.  Long hair and a nice smile helps.  Alright, its basically all the pink parts.  But that's it!  Not really, there are some domestic benefits too.  Whatever the other benefits are, you and I both know it, she had you at boobs.

Our best scientists have been trying to discover exactly how God tricked the female for about 5,000 years or so.  We still haven't nailed it down yet.  As far as we can tell it has something to do with a fear of spiders and an inability to change oil or deal with mechanical things.  Lifting heavy stuff and reaching things on the top shelf might be in there.  One guy even researched the never ending need to ask someone, "does this make my butt look big?"  We've been researching this for millennia.  We still don't know.  Every time someone gets close to figuring it out and publishing a paper on it, boobs!

Besides the pink parts the married man gets other benefits.  Food.  Food is good.  Food is a lot like boobs, except you can put it in your mouth in public and nobody gets upset.  My wife doesn't cook all that often but when she does I appreciate it.

One of the wife's signature dishes is cheesy potatoes.  That might not be the real name of it, I don't know.  I call them cheesy potatoes.  I'm not sure how to make them or what's in it.  I think it's cheese, potatoes, and crack cocaine, but there might be other stuff too.  Cheesy potatoes good.  Ug. Ug. Yum!  This is important latter.

One item of very intimate knowledge about my wife is she sheds.  All women do this.  All of you.  Stop trying to deny it or rationalize that, "its not that bad".  You all do it.  Frankly I suspect that it's one of the ways you mark your territory.  My wife knows when I've been around other women, because inevitably she finds some other women's hair on my sweater.  How she knows its not hers is a mystery.  It probably works the same way dogs sniffing each others butt does.

Yes she knows.  I remember one time I spent the weekend with a regular of this blog.  His wife is a redhead.  His daughter is a redhead.  Both are attractive women.  My wife knows that as a young man I went through a redhead phase.  I got over that part of my life, and most of the scars are healing nicely.  I mean of course the physical scars.  The emotional ones were easy.  Been there, done that, curl up in the fetal position when I think about it too long.

I came home after a nice relaxing 3 days away to "the examination".  The examination is a lot like a perp walk in a cop show, except there is only one suspect and the jury has already found you guilty.  The wife spotted a tell tail red hair on my shirt.  Deftly she plucked it and looked it over.  She sniffed it too. 

"Where did you get this?" she wanted to know. 

"I dunno", I said, "get what?"

"THISSSSS HAIR" she hissed.  "It's red", she said.

Do you remember that scene in The Green Mile where they are practicing for the execution?  It was pretty much like that, except with less mercy and compassion.

"His wife is a redhead", I said, thinking that settled it.

"This isn't middle aged married hair" she accused, "It's teenaged hotty hair".

"Ummm" I paused.  Incidentally the long "ummm" is the married mans primary defensive tool in these situations.  It's a stall technique. Sometimes we can stall long enough for the wife to figure out a perfectly legitimate, and harmless explanation that lets us off the hook.  Sometimes.

"How did you get it" she asked.

I should have went for the "Ummm" again, but I had just used that and it didn't work.  So I did what perfectly innocent married men have been doing for ages.  I panicked.  Then I told the truth.

"From sleeping in her bed", I offered.  Yep.  I said it.  I was too dumb to lie.  Incidentally I stick to the couch when I crash there now.  The doc says if everything goes ok I can get the metal plate out of my head next year.

Women shed.  All of you.  Normally the only spare hair that causes me problems is my wife's.  Mostly its just a inconvenience in the food.  Remember I said it was going to be important latter.  Tonight we had cheesy potatoes.  Sometimes if they get over cooked they stick to the pan.  If they're just a little over cooked, we fight over who gets them.  If they get way over cooked, the dog gets them.

The potatoes stuck to the pan and got over cooked.  I think the dog knows that a slight burning smell means he's getting a treat.  Anyway I scrapped all the brown stuff off for him and put it down on the floor.  He walked right over, took a slobbery sniff and right as he was fix'n to stick his nose in he stopped. 

The dog looked at the dish.  Then he looked at me.  Then he looked at the dish and gave a snort.  He pushed the dish with his paw and whined.  Then he looked at me again, as if to say, "what are you trying to pull here"? 

I looked down at the dish.  Sure enough there were two long people hairs right smack in the middle of the burnt cheesy potatoes.  I pulled them out.  The dog eagerly wagged his tail and dove in with a gusto.

Not only does my wife shed, but it grosses out the dog!  This is almost as good as the time my daughter "tooted".  I'm told little girls don't fart.  She tooted and the dog placed both his paws over his nose and whimpered. 

At what point do you go from redneck to white trash?  We gotta be getting close.  If Jeff Foxworthy shows up with a film crew I'm done for.  Either that or I need to rethink buying purebred dogs.