Poo

It's hard to say how long it takes me to stop saying no when my wife makes a suggestion. Like going to the dentist, much depends on how long problems have been ignored.

I know that I'm hard-wired to maintain the status quo and I'm very stubborn; really, if you ask my wife, impossible to change. But saying no to the wife is forbidden; this I know, this I have learned in my lifetime. I've been learning to replace the word "no" by sounds like "humph," "uh-huh," and "hmmmm." Not that easy. I dare you to name one example of Martian who had ever heard of these sounds before arriving on Venus.

That admitted, I must further confess the shame I feel when caught saying no to my wife's idea - and then proved wrong. Many a time the idea is not a serious one. Sure, it makes saying no to a not-that-serious idea even more stupid. The question is not whether I'm wrong. The big question is, What's the big deal about who's right and who's wrong? A couple of months ago, my wife was looking for picture books to buy for our daughter. A second after she showed me the book about human digestive system, I heard myself say skeptically, "Uh-oh!" I felt the word no coming out of my mouth, and just in the nick of time I caught myself, before I made another mistake.

Okay.... okay... my daughter really loves that gorgeously gross picture book showing how the food journey comes to an end.