MY VIEW
Bob O’Connor: Husbands can’t dodge wives’ loaded questions
Back in the ’90s, some guy got rich writing a book called “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” The book’s premise was that the sexes are so different in communication styles and emotional needs that we might as well be from different planets. I checked the guy’s biography and he is on marriage number two and he got his Ph. D. through a correspondence course from an unaccredited university.
I figure if a background like that qualifies you as an expert on male-female relationships, I should be able to weigh in on the subject. I am, after all, a certified male and my wife is — and I am sure of this — a female. Though I am a mere foot soldier in the great Battle of the Sexes, I have been to the front lines and I have the scars to prove it.
Here’s a recent exchange my wife and I had as she perused the obituaries in the Sunday News:
“Honey,” she asked. “If I die before you, do you think you will remarry?”
Although engrossed in the supermarket ads, I lowered the paper and answered. “Never! How could I possibly ever love another?” I thought this was the answer she was looking for. As usual, I was wrong.
“But studies show that people in the happiest marriages tend to remarry,” she pouted. “Don’t we have a happy marriage?”
I realized too late that I was entering that dark and forbidding place where only husbands can go: The Land Of You Can’t Possibly Say The Right Thing. I tried to recover.
“Well, when you put it that way, of course I will remarry. In fact, I’ll probably hook up right there at your funeral breakfast. Hell, I can start looking around now if you’d like; there’s an old lady down the street who gives me the eye whenever I’m out mowing the lawn in my cut-offs.” She was not amused.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Would you get married again and, this is important, how long would you wait?”
“I would wait at least a full year and I would only marry someone I met in church,” I answered. Satisfied, she went back to the death notices and I to the frozen foods page. I thought the matter was closed.
“Is she prettier than me?” she suddenly asked.
“Who?” I said, already forgetting what we were talking about. “That cow you married,” she demanded. “Is she better looking than me?”
I was beginning to understand this Mars-Venus thing. “She isn’t nearly as nice looking as you, she’s five years older and she has webbed feet. In fact, I don’t know why I ever married her,” I answered.
Wife number one smiled. She was happy and I was allowed to get back to the manly business of assembling the shopping list. Several minutes passed before she warned me, “Don’t let her have my jewelry; I want those things to go to the girls!”
“Yes, dear,” I sighed. “And don’t let her have any of my clothes,” she continued. “I’d hate the thought of her prancing around in one of my dresses with that big butt of hers.”
I realized that the only way I was going to stay out of trouble would be for me to die first. I should be so lucky.
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