Are you smarter than your spouse?
Mark and I bring different qualities to our marriage.
I am the educated one. I went to college. I know how to convert documents to PDFs. Just today I took a trivia quiz in which I correctly guessed—through multiple choice, but still—that “Bloomsday” is an annual Irish celebration in which people read passages from James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Mark, bless his heart, can’t even diagram a sentence. (I know, how embarrassing.)
So it’s not easy to admit that, in spite of all my acquired knowledge, he’s the smart one.
Oh, I know things. I know the chemical symbol for potassium and the names of all six of Henry VIII’s wives. But he knows how to do things, which, it turns out, can also be valuable.
“I gaped at him like Homo Erectus No. 2 watching Homo Erectus No. 1 strike the first match. ”
If we were ever stranded on a desert island, I feel like Mark’s ability to craft a shelter and trap animals for food would do more for us than my knowing the world’s record for surviving without water, however topical that information might be.
This isn’t to say that he’s better than me. Sure, he works with his hands and has developed capabilities that involve physical strength and dexterity as well as an understanding of physics applied to real-world situations. But I know the difference between “affect” and “effect.”
I just worry that I’ve used so much of my brain capacity for learning about stuff that there’s no space left for common sense. You should see me staggering 60 yards across the lawn with a 50-pound bag of chicken feed slung over my shoulder. A smarter person would back the car up to the coop.
Part of my issue is that I don’t think ahead. In my world, “painting myself into a corner” isn’t an expression; it’s a real risk every time I embark on a home improvement project.
Mark, on the other hand, tackles every job or problem with forethought. He contemplates the process, envisions the desired result, and works methodically to get there. Yet he can’t quote a single line of Shakespeare. (“Yorick who? Is that the guy at the transfer station?”)
I’m not ashamed that I can’t compete with him when it comes to practical intelligence. But I do get mad when he teases me about it. Like the other day, when he broke a sneaker lace.
Shoelaces come in a range of inches, and the packets give suggestions based on how many rows of eyelets your shoe has. Still, it’s a crapshoot. Despite my best guesses, I end up with laces so short I can’t tie them or so long I have to wrap them around my calves like a gladiator.
I always assumed that buying the right shoelaces was one of those impossible tasks that everyone struggled with, like plugging in a USB cord on the first try.
Imagine my awe when Mark, before heading out to buy new laces, pulled the unbroken one out of the other sneaker and grabbed the tape measure.
What was happening here?
“Hold these,” he said, handing me one end of the shoelace and the end of the tape.
Had other people done this? Was I so busy remembering the proper spelling of “supersede” that measuring the old laces had never occurred to me?
As he stepped backward, slowly extending the tape with the lace held alongside, I gaped at him like Homo Erectus No. 2 watching Homo Erectus No. 1 strike the first match.
“That’s brilliant,” I whispered.
Mark snorted.
He walked past me, chuckling and muttering just loud enough for me to hear, “And she’s the one who went to college. Wow.”
Jerk.
I wanted to tell him that college had taught me other vital skills—how to analyze the present in the context of the past, how to make connections across disciplines, how to format footnotes—but I couldn’t get my thoughts together before he was out the door.
Then it came to me.
Running out onto the porch, I waved the plastic tip of the shoelace I still held in my hand.
As he climbed into his truck, I yelled—loud enough for the neighbors to hear—“You think you’re so smart? I bet you don’t even know what this thing is called! It’s an ‘aglet,’ genius!”
I admit it was a cheap shot. But he had it coming.
(Originally published in the Addison Independent, October 2024)
