This week I am performing a wedding. Tennessee state law says before a couple weds, they’re encouraged to seek a minimum of four hours of premarital counseling. Four hours of counseling to prepare you for marriage? That’s like watching four epsiodes of Perry Mason then thinking your’re fully prepared to take the bar exam.

Despite 31 years of marriage, my wife doesn’t believe I’m capable of dressing myself. I have learned that for every year of marriage,a wife develops the notion that her man is either a helpless child or a simpleton. Men, when was the last time your wife came out of the walk-in closet and you said, “Oh no, that won’t do, go back in and change into another shirt, it’s the wrong color?” No man would ever dare to make such a statement, unless they were prepared to nap with Fido in the backyard.

Yet the other day I came out of the same closet, and my wife told me, “No, wrong color, go back in and change into the other shirt!” In a separate incident, as I was dressing, she started to button the very shirt I was putting on. It was at this point I felt like standing on a chair, raising my hands in the air, and exclaiming like any four year old would, “SO BIG NOW!”

Marriage books don’t teach you these kind of evolutionary things. The mother-son relationship evolves over the years until one day you realize your wife has slowly become your kindergarten teacher.

Don’t believe me, how often do you start a sentence with, “Honey can I…?” “Would you mind if I….”
A man stood at the pearly gates of heaven and on each side of the entrance was a sign. One said, “For all the men who have been ruled by their wive’s.” The line stretched into infinity through the clouds. The other sign stated, “For all the men who have ruled their wive’s.” One man stood alone in line. St Peter walks up to the gentleman and inquires, “Sir, why are you in this line?” To which the lone man responds, “I don’t know, my wife told me too!”

This week I’m going to become the man of the house again. I am going to stake my claim. I have resolve. Of course it’s only if my wife says I can.