Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Bastirds with an E

In every long term relationship a more or less informal division of labor takes hold. I mean look, you don't think Butch & Sundance swapped off the gunfighting chores in interest of 'fairness' do you? Well, it's the same in marriage too.

Generally, I'd say wives tend to do more things and more frequently. This is not to knock husbands, who often have specific and quite useful skills, for which there's a limited demand. Spider killer is very indispensable for example; it's simply that meal preparation hits the daily schedule with more regularity.

Now in my marriage? Difficult to explain really. Yes, spider killing. Also take out garbage, and random heavy lifting. But my core strengths are:
1.) Asking me is quicker than looking it up on the computer.
3.) Really good at math.
2.) Ability to solve seemingly intractable practical challenges.

Like that flush mounted bulb, way up there in the kitchen ceiling. Hard enough to get hold of in the first place, but when you try to turn the bulb the socket turns too. Well I solved that problem. How? I'm not telling everbody on the internet! That's intellectual property!

But it's core strength number one that most recently came to the fore. Yes, my wealth of knowledge that, when you get right down to it, most of which ain't worth knowing in the first place.

My wife walked in the door saying, "I rented that new WW2 movie with Brad Pitt in it." A few minutes later, DVD is playing and I say, "Hey, it's Bo Svenson! He was in 'Walking Tall part three' what a lame movie that was!"

"Well where is Brad Pitt?"
"In kindegarten probably, when this movie was made."
"But I rented 'Inglorious Bastards' so what's this?"
"This is 'Inglorious Bastards' ma'am."

Before it got too much like an Abbot & Costello routine, I explained that "Inglorious Basterds" is Tarantino's homage to the ensemble suicide mission WW2 flicks of the 1970's with "Dirty Dozen" being finest one. So Quentin being a film buff titled his movie after this, with misspelling as an in-joke.

Therefore my resevoir of useless information came to the rescue again. Did the explanation make her any less frustrated? Nope, not one bit really. I've found that's often the outcome when I dispense useless information, but I don't let myself get discouraged.

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