The Smartest Man on Earth

Hi. Today I am joining Once Upon a Miracle for True Story Tuesday. Join in the fun.




Just in time for summer travel I thought you might enjoy this little piece of wisdom.

My husband is a smart guy. He does all of our bills and it's a good thing. If I did them we would all have cute clothes and no electricity. He knows more than anyone I know about baseball. Not just trivia, but strategy and well....stuff.

He is a leader. He gets things done. He may be a tad...just a tad of a control freak. The way my family and I do things may drive him crazy - like this.

The Coach: Are we going to your mom's for dinner?


Me : I think so.


The Coach: What time?


Me : I dunno. When I get the kids in the van. Later


The Coach : What time did your mom say dinner would be?


Me : She didn't. I didn't ask.


The Coach : What are we having?


Me : I dunno. I didn't ask.


The Coach: Can you call and find out. (By the way..he doesn't CARE what is for dinner HE JUST HAS TO KNOW preferably before breakfast.)


Me: Sure

(Calling.) Mom, what's for dinner? Ok.

( To The Coach) She doesn't know.

Except that we can't have the conversation once. We have to have it over and over until I can begin to chip away at his mind enough for him to realize we really DON"T KNOW.

I digress.


As a result of this combination of intelligence and control freakiness he sometimes gets impatient with other people. Granted those people are usually pretty annoying, but it is still impatience.

Recently we were starting off on a 13 hour car ride. Just contemplate THAT for a moment. Thirteen hours, five kids, one mini van. About twenty minutes into this ride The Coach started griping about someone...I don't even remember who now..who had done something stupid.

And I asked him, as a loving, gentle way to point out his impatience, "Do you REALLY think you are smarter than everyone on the planet?"

His reply was an unexpected and unequivocal, "Yes." Which led to the inevitable conversation about whether or not he was smarter than me.

Now, I will be the first to say I did not make great grades. I graduated. I earned a degree. I worked hard. But in every day common sense situations I am smart and efficient. I can remember how to make Ramen Noodles even. (This reminds me of that quote in Breakfast Club, "Without lamps, there would be no light.")

I threw everything I had at him to try to get him to concede that we were equally intelligent. No Dice. I brought up an IQ test I had beat him on by two points. He didn't remember. I recalled the time I advised him to make up for his broken speedometer by making sure it took sixty second to go from one mile marker to another. Nope, not good enough.

Finally I had to pull out the trump card. "A smart man would NOT have stated during the first twenty minutes of a cross country drive he was smarter than his wife."

I am also sad to admit that for the rest of the week (ok all year) I may have sarcastically referred to my husband as, "The Smartest Man in the World". I do this more emphatically when it takes him three tries to make microwave popcorn, or he sits patiently on a cooler waiting for a mole to emerge in our back yard so he can whack it with a shovel. (The original Whack A Mole.)

The moral of this story is. Say goofy things at the END of a long car trip. Afteryour spouse has taken a Valium. :)

That is all. Enjoy your trip.


I am also linking up to Tuesday Tag Along at Twee Poppets and Follow Me Back Tuesday at Boobies, Babies and A Blog.