TEAM LAST CALL

Between you and me, my wife didn’t really take turning 30 all that well. And when I say “didn’t take it all that well,” I mean she freaked out like a vampire caught in the sunlight. Shrieking, thrashing around, trying to bite through my neck – the whole deal. It was like living under the reign of Caligula, but with fewer beheadings.

I’m exaggerating, of course. There were at least as many beheadings.

Death and carnage lay all about. On the scale of natural disasters, my wife’s birthday ranked somewhere between the black plague and the giant meteor that killed all the dinosaurs. It was a full-on crisis, just a few horsemen short of the apocalypse. The only reason you didn’t hear about it on the evening news was that it got edged out by round-the-clock coverage of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ engagement. But it still got more coverage than the death toll in Iraq.

It’s been several months since my wife’s birthday, and I’m honestly still a little nervous to broach the subject. That little vein in the middle of her forehead is just now starting to swell back to its normal size.

When I first told my wife I was going to be writing about her birthday for my next column, her head started spinning around in circles and blood came out of our walls. Then she started talking backwards Latin and flinging large pieces of furniture around the room with her mind. Our poor little Jack Russell still hasn’t stopped shaking. Of course, that could just be because he’s a Jack Russell. And because I fed him a bag of espresso beans.

I realize I’m probably coming across as mean and insensitive. I mean, what kind of jerk talks this way about his own wife? This kind of jerk. Because the truth is, my wife thinks this kind of crap is funny, which is why she married me in the first place. Well, it was either that or my love handles and enormous forehead. I’m not really sure.

Actually, that brings us to the real reason why I’m writing about my wife’s 30th birthday: our marriage. Frankly, I’m starting to get a little worried about being the man my wife needs in her life now that she’s becoming a mature woman. Because 30 is the mark of adulthood, of responsibility. My wife is growing up, getting all reflective and sophisticated, yet I continue to be a mental toddler – which is good in that it qualifies me to be the leader of the free world, but bad in that it makes me an immature, bumbling idiot.

Assuming for a minute that it wasn’t my enormous forehead that reeled her in, the best thing I’ve got going for me is the ability to make my wife laugh, and I’m concerned that I might not always be able to do that the way I can now, short of taking off my clothes.

The fact is, I will never, ever stop laughing at flatulence. I’m a 29-year-old man who can be reduced to tears just from someone pretending to pass gas. The old hand-in-the-armpit, the old mouth-in-the-elbow – they get me every time. I’m an addict. I’m a toot-aholic. I’m hopeless.

So what if – I can hardly even bring myself to type this – but what if there comes a day when my wife no longer appreciates a good fart joke? Because unfortunately, my ability to produce them in bulk is pretty much my only marketable skill. The jokes, I mean.

What if my wife just plain outgrows me? What if her needs change? What if she starts to desire a different kind of man, one who knows the difference between a wrench and a screwdriver and can find the little thinger on your car where the oil goes without having to ask for help?

I did manage to grow some chest hair recently, which I think is a positive step towards manliness, but for every “good” hair I grow, an “evil” one pops up in places you don’t even want to know about. It’s a losing battle.

My wife is now spending large quantities of time “taking stock of her life” and planning out things like her career and her future family. As in, she’s planning on making actual babies, like the kind with the sticky little hands and scabby little knees that are always vomiting and pooping and getting lollipops stuck in their hair.

This presents a problem, in that I am nowhere near being prepared for parenthood. I have enough trouble changing my own underwear, let alone someone else’s. I still can’t even say the word “nipple” without giggling uncontrollably.

I need to do some growing up, is what it comes down to. And I need to do it quickly, before my wife’s biological clock starts chiming. I don’t want her to do anything rash just because I’m not good at things like “handling responsibility” or “remembering to put on pants.” I run to the mailbox every day to make sure there isn’t a package addressed to my wife from David Crosby.

Deep down, I know I can handle a child. I’ll be fine as long as I can just manage to stay at least one full day ahead of the baby developmentally. At least until it turns 7 or 8 and starts running around the house making fart noises, at which point I will be stuck in a perpetual state of shooting milk out my nose.

The day my wife outgrows my immature potty humor will be a dark day indeed. But I will cling to the hope that we will never see that day. I will keep the faith. I will not yield to the darkness. I will pass gas into the face of despair.

Meanwhile, I’m going to do my best to do some growing up of my own. Yes, I’m going to be a new man. A mature man. A responsible man. And I’m going to start right now by fixing the toilet upstairs that’s been running since June. Can you hand me that screwdriver? What? Oh, sorry. I mean wrench.

There she was, a spoon in one hand, a bowl in the other, whizzing through our neighborhood at 40 mph with the steering wheel pinched between her knees.

She was obviously crazy. Not the harmless kind of crazy that makes people buy Toby Keith albums or get excited about watching cars race around in circles. I’m talking about the kind of crazy that leads to people biting off other people’s ears during boxing matches or trying to privatize social security.

I decided that I couldn’t keep quiet about it. No matter what the consequences, I had to let this woman know that her behavior was simply unacceptable.

So I turned to her and said, “Honey, can you please not eat cereal while you’re driving!”

But my wife wouldn’t listen.

Remember how in Driver’s Ed. class your teacher always instructed you to drive defensively? It’s because he knew that one day you’d be sharing the road with my wife.

Whether she’s putting on her stockings or trying to balance her checkbook, you can be sure that at any given point while she’s driving, my wife is performing at least one other task that requires the use of both hands and usually a foot or two. I’m pretty sure I once caught her in the middle of a yoga pose while she was driving us to the mall, although I couldn’t prove it.

You know how when people are bowling they do that little dance to help steer their ball away from the gutter? That’s me whenever I see my wife driving down the street, only in my case, the gutter is the oncoming lane of traffic and the pins are the neighbor kids. She is to a highway what a tornado is to a house of cards. If she were a professional wrestler, they’d call her “Royer the Destroyer.”

Riding passenger in my wife’s car always makes for a rather transcendent experience. Watching kitties bounce off your windshield really has a way of putting the rest of your problems into perspective. The fact that I have no clean underwear for work tomorrow, for example, seems like much less of a crisis as my wife and I are plowing through our neighbors’ trashcans or taking out a rhododendron bush.

Whether we’re speeding the wrong way down a one-way street, turning a curve on two wheels at 70 mph or ripping off our bumper as we back into the garage, I can just sit back and relax as what I thought were my biggest problems simply melt away.

There is one small problem that won’t go away, though, and that is the fact that, thanks to my wife’s rather relaxed approach to driving, our car looks worse than Michael Moore in a pair of Daisy Dukes. From the scrapes running the entire length of the car to the ominous poodle-shaped dents on the hood, this vehicle is in sad, sad shape. Any day now, I expect it to follow Vin Diesel’s acting career right into the Cosmic Crapper.

On a good day, the car moves with all the enthusiasm of a fat kid who just got picked for the skins team in gym class, which is a subject I know a thing or two about. It’s really a minor miracle that it even starts at all. Although, once you get that car rolling downhill, it’s a force to be reckoned with. Just ask our neighbors’ cats.

The only thing that looks worse than our car’s exterior is our car’s interior. I’m not sure what happened in there, but it wasn’t good. If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say that at some point a grizzly bear and a mountain cat must have broken into the car and had a wrestling match in the front seat in a vat of pudding. I mean, there are actual chocolate stains on the ceiling. But I guess that’s what happens when you take a speedbump at 70 mph with a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles in your hand.

So basically, we need a new car. The problem is, I have a hard time justifying going even deeper into debt just so my wife can have a new, more luxurious vehicle with which to terrorize our neighbors’ mailboxes. Although, for as much time as she spends in her car waiting for the cops to fill out accident reports, she might as well have reliable heating and air conditioning.

When the subject comes up – which is only as often as my wife hits something with her car, by which I mean daily – my wife swears that things would be different with a new car. She’d be careful, more responsible. No more backing into our garage when the door is closed. No more sideswiping old ladies walking down the street. She even promises to steer with her actual hands. Which is comforting, if not entirely believable.

I don’t know. Maybe I should be more trusting and just get the new car. Then again, her current car was new when we got it, and now it looks like it’s been trampled by elephants. If we get another car, how do I know that she won’t just get bored with it three weeks later and start using it to knock coconuts out of trees or something?

It’s a real conundrum. Until I get it all sorted out, all I can say is, watch your back. My wife is on the move, and the Wheaties are missing from the cupboard.

That was her first mistake. Her second mistake was grossly underestimating the speed at which I could regress to the mindset of an 18-year-old.

There is a state of being that a man enters whenever he’s left alone, as if a veil were lifted from his eyes. I call it the state of Manlightenment, which, once achieved, is like being thrust into a long forgotten dimension, one in which entire meals are made of beef jerky; in which the only required uniform is your favorite pair of underpants; in which “T-shirt,” “hanky” and “napkin” all refer to the same piece of cloth.

As my wife closed the door behind her, I stood in the middle of the living room, paralyzed by the limitless possibilities now open to me. What would I do first? Surf across our hardwood floors in my socks? Rent the Rambo trilogy? Eat an entire chocolate cake with a pair of chopsticks?

I could do anything. I could put roller skates on the cat. I could bite the heads off all the Goldfish crackers and throw the rest back in the box. I could put on my wife’s underwear and prance around to Kylie Minogue songs. Not that I would, but I could. Forget I said that.

The only things standing between me and complete Manlightenment were the dogs. The dogs represented responsibility. They needed to be fed. They needed to go for walks. They needed to wear funny hats! Come here, doggies!

Minutes later, my dogs sat on the living room rug looking up at me, the Jack Russell in an adorable little sombrero, the cocker spaniel in a little pink bow that slid down over her left eye. They looked confused and ashamed, not very festive at all. Clearly what was needed here was a pep talk.

“Alright, listen, dogs. We have two short days to live life without boundaries. Think of it like a weekend in a giant field full of defenseless bunnies and fire hydrants and unlimited access to the cat’s litterbox. Yum! So you can see why this is important to me. Here’s my point: for the next 48 hours, let’s not bother Daddy with our usual complaints. If you get hungry, here are two large pizzas. If you need to go to the bathroom, here are two large pizza boxes. And let’s see ... well, that’s pretty much all you do. OK, do we have an understanding?”

I looked at the dogs. They looked back at me. One passed gas, the other curled into a circle and began licking himself. I knew then that we were all on the same page.

Admittedly, I had a few concerns about being able to achieve Manlightenment after such a long hiatus. What if I was too mature? What if my tastes had changed? Maybe I’d been stuck in a different reality for too long, the reality of man living in a grown up world, working a grown up job, married to a grown up wife, slave to a seemingly endless list of hard-to-remember rules.

“Don’t burp the alphabet at the dinner table.”

“Don’t answer the door in your underpants.”

“Take the trash out.”

“Don’t burp the pledge of allegiance at the dinner table.”

“How many days have you been wearing those underpants?”

“I told you to take the trash out.”

“If you teach our children to burp at the dinner table, I’ll kill you.”

“Is that smell coming from you?”

“You forgot to take the trash out!”

These kind of rules, obviously, are enough to break any man’s spirit. But had they broken mine? Was I too far gone? Or was I still capable of recapturing my manhood? I pondered these questions long and hard as I stood in the kitchen, in my tighty whiteys and a cowboy hat, dunking hot dogs into the peanut butter jar and sipping Red Bull through a Twizzler.

It occurred to me that five years ago this would have been a perfectly normal scene in my life, give or take the tighty whiteys. But the fact is, I am no longer a 23-year-old bachelor, and it’s exactly this kind of behavior that I, by which I mean my wife, will not tolerate.

Over the next few hours, I learned a lot of important things about myself, including the following:

1. While I can fit eight dimes up my right nostril, I can only fit seven up my left;

2. I don’t need my hands to operate the TV remote, or to eat grapes;

3. I don’t look good in bikini briefs;

4. My head is nearly a half-pound over the average weight;

5. You can totally get razor burn on places other than your face;

6. I cannot eat baked beans while doing a headstand.

I also learned that chocolate sauce is delicious over chili and potato chips, but not very good at all on a kielbasa. I know, I was as shocked as you about the kielbasa.

That night I dreamt that my internal organs were going on strike. They were all parading around my living room, waving little picket signs that said things like, “Just say no to chili dogs after midnight!” and “Digest this: we demand better working conditions!”

In the morning, I woke up to what I could only assume was an angry mountain cat trying to claw its way out of my stomach. I spent the next 24 hours sprawled out on the couch, whimpering softly as thousands of tiny little Irishmen slipped on miniature kilts and performed an endless round of Riverdance in my belly. And then, just as I was about to succumb to the delirium of my pain, my wife came walking through the door.

“Oh, what’s wrong, baby?” she cooed. “I’ll make you some soup and tea, and you’ll feel better in no time!”

I looked at the dogs. They looked back at me. One rolled over so my wife could scratch his belly, the other lay her head on my wife’s knee and went to sleep. I knew then that we were all on the same page.

A few weeks ago, I decided that I was tired of looking like I was carrying around Danny DeVito under my shirt. I was going to lose some weight, and I was going to do it before one more person accused me of shoplifting a cantaloupe.

The question was, How?

I’ve already failed miserably on the annoyingly popular Atkins diet. I did manage to lose a total of eight pounds on the diet, but somehow ended up looking even fatter than when I started. While the scale said yes, my jeans with the 30-inch waist said, “Back off, tubby!” Wait, no, that was my wife. Anyway, I concluded that all eight pounds must have come from my self-esteem. Three months of being silently judged by food service employees will do that to you.

“No bun on your burger?” the confused McDonald’s employees would gasp.

“That’s right,” I’d say.

“No bun at all?”

“Nope.”

“Just the burger, without the bun?”

“Yep ...”

“Supersize the fries and milkshake?”

“Of course.”

“Apple pie?”

“Two, please.”

Of course, as soon as I quit the diet, every restaurant on the planet added Atkins-approved items to its menu. That’s like spending three months in jail, only to discover upon your release that it’s since become completely legal to shave your neighbor’s cat. For example.

It’s possible that the fault is mine that the diet didn’t work. I’ve never been very good at things like “avoiding sweets” or “easing up on the carbs” or “not eating cake for breakfast.” I’m just a man, after all. A man with child-bearing hips.

Dieting just wasn’t doing the trick. I knew that in order to lose weight I would have to do something I’d been meaning to do my entire life. Iron my shirt? No, that’s not it. Stop my hairline from receding? No, but thanks for noticing.

I had to exercise. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

Late at night, after my wife was sound asleep, I raided her closet. Headband? Check. Sweatpants? Check. Dignity? Nowhere to be seen. I was ready to go!

Down the stairs I crept like a spandex bandit and quietly popped my wife’s yoga tape into our VCR. On the screen appeared a perky, unitard-clad woman smiling from cheek to cheek as she slowly started folding herself in half and stuffing herself into her own purse.

“Namaste!” she exclaimed, pretending to just then notice there was a camera in the room. “Welcome to the new you!”

The new me! Yes, today was a new beginning! The world was going to see a brand new Jeff, a slim Jeff, a Jeff who could no longer use his own belly as a TV tray. I plopped myself down on my wife’s yoga mat and waited for the magic to happen.

“OK, we’ll start with some simple warm-up exercises,” the instructor said. “With your legs stretched out before you, bend over and touch your toes.”

So far, so good. I mean, I could only reach my knees, but I could already feel what professionals call “the burn.” I figured I had probably already lost a pound or two. Exercising is fun!

“Now,” said the instructor, “lift your body off the mat with your tongue and do 10 push-ups. Lower yourself back down, do a split, and rotate your head 360 degrees to the left, like this. Good. Now clap your hands in salutation to the sun and remove any excess wax from your ears with your pinky toes.”

That’s when things started going downhill. As it turns out, not only do I have the upper-body strength of a Twix bar, but my sense of balance falls somewhere between that of a drunk toddler and a one-legged cat on a treadmill.

Approximately 30 painful minutes of yoga later, I lay paralyzed on the floor, panting and drooling like a teenage boy at the Super Bowl halftime show. Fortunately, my dogs were there in my time of need to provide a number of helpful services, like trying to perch on my forehead and bury their noses in my most private of places.

The pain I felt where my “abs” were supposed to be was comparable only to, say, shoving a jalapeño pepper up your nose. But I wasn’t discouraged. I could hardly wait to drag myself to a mirror and inspect my new, chiseled physique. My wife would hardly recognize me in the morning. “Don’t be scared, honey,” I’d have to say, “It’s me, your husband.”

“Jeff?” she’d gasp in wide-eyed wonder. “But you look so ... so ...”

“I know,” I’d say with an alluring smile, flexing my enormous quadriceps and then reaching out to steady my swooning bride.

Once I was able to feel my legs again, I brushed the various cats and dogs off of my lap and rushed to the bathroom mirror to admire the fruits of my labor. Imagine my disappointment when all I saw staring back at me was my old body, only redder and puffier after being subjected it to a half-hour of positions that I’m pretty sure are outlawed in several states.

Clearly, exercise was not for me. Like Anna Nicole Smith and literacy, some pairings just aren’t meant to be. For 30 long minutes, I gave my all to exercise, and exercise gave nothing in return. I knew I could never be happy in a one-sided relationship like that.

But at least the night wasn’t going to be a total bust. If I stayed awake for just a few more hours, I could be first in line for fresh Krispy Kremes!

It’s my belief that, if you’ve already got one bad dog dominating your home life by eating, then puking up, then re-eating everything in your house that’s not chained down, then one thing you clearly do not need is a second bad dog. Four out of five doctors agree that a second bad dog, when added to the first bad dog, would make a total of two bad dogs, which also means twice as much destruction and puppy vomit waiting for you when you get home from work.

The fifth doctor is my wife.

At some point, my wife got the idea into her head that a second dog is exactly what we need to cure our first dog’s behavioral problems. And not just any second dog will do. What my wife wants is a pug dog. A stupid, stupid pug dog.

For those of you who don’t know, pug dogs have the mental capacity of a washrag, which in turn has the mental capacity of Anna Nicole Smith. Which is why no one keeps Anna Nicole Smiths as house pets. Not anymore, anyway.

If you put a pug dog and a pair of gym shorts at the beginning of a maze, the gym shorts would find their way out first. Then the pug dog would eat them. Then he’d throw them up on your slippers.

In summary, trying to fix our dog’s problems by getting a pug dog is like trying to cure Keanu Reeves of bad acting by making him study old Patrick Swayze tapes.

Our first dog, Henry, is a Jack Russel terrier, which is basically like a tiny alligator that’s covered with fur and never stops bouncing. Although they sometimes hide it very well, Jack Russels are known for their intelligence and ability to be trained. For example, if we command Henry to stop chewing on that defenseless baby and put it back where he got it, and to cough up its shoe, plus its rattle, and its brother, nine times out of 10, he’ll do it.

A pug dog, on the other hand, would just stand there with the baby in its mouth, snorting and looking all crazy with its bug eyes rolling around in different directions. Then he’d throw up on your slippers.

My wife’s idea, which actually started making sense after a while, was that our two idiot puppies would spend all day jumping all over each other while mommy and daddy were at work. Then, when we came home, our two exhausted puppies would lay at our feet, all tuckered out from a long, hard day of hiney sniffing.

Enamored with the idea of spending an evening at home that didn’t involve prying our dog’s teeth off of the neighbor kids, I agreed to a test run with a pug dog belonging to a friend who, for reasons that are obvious to me now, was looking to dish the the little drool factory off on someone else.

I knew we were going to have problems when, by the time he had waddled from our friend’s car to our front door, the little pug was snorting harder than George W. at a frat party. His bug eyes were bulging out of his head and his entire body was shaking like Rush Limbaugh stumbling past the pharmaceutical counter at the supermarket. (Jeff 2, republicans 0).

See Henry. See Henry run. See Henry bulldoze the little pug dog and jump on top of him like he was the last defenseless baby on earth. See Henry step on the pug’s face, bite his legs, shove his nose where no sun shines, and sit down where the pug’s neck ought to be.

“Oh boy, oh boy, this is gonna be fun, fun, fun!” said Henry, rolling the pug across the carpet like a White House intern. (Jeff 3, democrats 0)

“Snort, snort, wheez!” went the inverted pug, gasping for air and pedaling his legs like he was trying to get his imaginary bicycle up a very large imaginary hill.

I started to panic. Do dogs get heart attacks? If he doesn’t survive, could we be charged for involuntary dogslaughter? I’m too young and pretty to go to jail!

Our obviously appalled friend snatched up her dog and bolted out the door. As she fled to her car, she looked back over her shoulder, where she saw Henry popping up and down at our front door like the devil on a pogo stick.

True story: we never saw that girl or the pug dog again.

After the pug dog episode came the three-legged dog episode, which some of you might remember from a previous column. To recap: my wife tried to kidnap a three-legged dog she found in a parking lot. Why? Because it had three legs, and she loved it.

So, we had almost killed a pug dog, and we almost got caught trying to kidnap a three-legged mutt in the middle of a rain storm. Was fate trying to send us a message? Don’t be ridiculous.

As we speak, my darling wife is making arrangements for another test-run, this time with my sister’s geriatric cocker spaniel. She’s also decided that she wants a pair of ducks (like, actual living ducks) and a goat. Seriously.
But sometimes a man’s got to put his foot down. I draw the line at goats. The choice for me is goat-free. I’m laying down the law here.

Which means that we’ll probably have a goat by the end of the month.

(Goat 1, Jeff 0)

I mean, sure, her car looks like it just lost a wrestling match with Anna Nicole Smith over the last Twinkie on earth. But for all we know, all of the damage to her car was caused by a series of completely unavoidable accidents. Maybe it wasn’t really my wife’s fault at all.

Like how her front bumper is twisted up like a pretzel and practically dragging on the ground – I think it would be a mistake to just assume that this was caused by my wife’s allegedly terrible driving. Maybe her car was charged by an angry rhinocerous, and she was lucky to escape with just a busted bumper. Or maybe she saw a bank robbery in progress and rammed the getaway car to foil the crime. You can’t rule that kind of stuff out.

Or how her right tail light has been shattered – who says it’s because she backed into a telephone pole because she never, ever, ever looks behind her before going into reverse? For all we know, she was outside doing some gardening one day when suddenly she saw a senior citizen in a wheelchair speeding wildly down the hill without any brakes, so she jumped in her car, raced down the hill, surpassed the senior citizen, let the wheelchair gently bump into the back of her car, and eased the old man to a stop mere yards from the dangerous intersection at the bottom of the hill.

Sure, the impact of the wheelchair shattered her tail light, but it was a small price to pay for the life of the hapless senior citizen.

Or consider the countless scrapes, scratches and dents that cover her entire car from dangling bumper to bumper. You can’t just assume that these were the result of my wife being the absolute worst driver ever in the history of the world. I mean, maybe she was on her way to the grocery store one afternoon when ... uh ... an airplane transporting thousands of frozen turkeys flew overhead and ... um ... and right when the airplane was over her car, it was struck by lightening and cracked in half, and all of the turkeys fell out and plummeted through the sky right at my wife’s car, and ...

No, I would never, ever call my wife a bad driver. Because she’s not a bad driver. She’s just a terrible parker.

Watching my wife trying to maneuver her car into our garage is like watching Jessica Simpson trying to work her way into a childproof bottle of aspirin. It’s embarrassing for everyone involved, but try as you might, you just can’t make yourself look away from the carnage.

I’ll be standing in the kitchen, tirelessly slaving over dinner as usual, when suddenly I hear the sound of crumpling metal screeching through the air like Joan Rivers on fire. Through the window, I’ll see a hubcap slowly rolling its way from the garage to the front door.

“Hi honey. How was your day?” I’ll say.

“Fine. How was yours?” she’ll reply.

“Pretty good. Was that our hubcap?”

“Shut up.”

“Honey, you can’t just ...”

“Shut up.”

“How hard is it to just ...”

“Shut up.”

“But ...”

“Shut up.”

Fortunately for my blood pressure, I care as much about our cars as I do about Joan Rivers on fire, which is to say, not much. No, that’s not true. If Joan Rivers was really on fire, I’d probably throw some water on her; if my car was on fire, I’d rescue my box of casette tapes and then toast some marshmallows.

But my wife brings up a very good point just now as I’m writing this: without a functioning car, how in the world would she get to Payless each day to buy a new pair of shoes? This is something I had neglected to consider.

But in order to keep her car in top shopping condition, I have to take it to the mechanic approximately once every 15 minutes, which is about how long it takes for my wife to drive her car home from the mechanic’s and try to park it.

The problem with that is, my mechanic is the devil.

I wouldn’t be as frustrated with my mechanic if I didn’t have the sneaking suspicion that he was making stuff up.

“Unfortunately, it looks like you’ve got a major problem with your pim-pom,” my mechanic reported during my last visit.

“My pim-pom?” I winced.

“Oh, yeah. Big time. You’re lucky we caught it when we did. A few more days of driving, and your pim-pom would probably have been grinding right into your patooter – and you know what that means!”

“What?” I gasped.

“Well, for one thing, the heat from your patooter would have worn your snoozle all the way down to the gingerdoodle!” he exclaimed. “And patooter-provoked snoozle-wear on your gingerdoodle is no laughing matter. Why, you’d be lucky to get another five miles out of this car!”

“Five miles?” I cried.

“Tops.”

“Oh, man!”

“Yeah!”

“Whew!”

“Uh-huh!”

“That was close!”

“You bet!”

We stood in silence for a while, shaking our heads and marveling at our good fortune.

“So,” I said, taking in a deep breath, “How much does it cost to replace my ... uh ...”

“Your pim-pom.”

“Sure.”

“Let’s see ...,” said the mechanic, picking up a clipboard and furrowing his brow. “After parts, labor and sales tax, automotive repair tax, repair-of-automotive tax, charging-you-way-too-much-because-you-don’t-know-any-better tax, breaking-stuff-myself-so-I-can-charge-you-to-fix-it tax, and tax tax, your total would be ... $800.”

I peed my pants a little. “$800? American dollars? Like, U.S. dollars? I need to sit down.”

When your car is worth less than the Backstreet Boys’ autograph, it’s difficult to invest another $800 into it. But my wife brings up another very good point just now: if we spent all of our money on a new car instead of fixing up our junker, how in the world would we be able to afford more dogs and the multiple doggie sweaters, doggie hats, and doggie toys that each of them would clearly require?

Yes ... I hadn’t thought of that.

If only our insurance covered rhinocerous attacks.

“Oh, look at the little three-legger!” my wife squealed in a voice that I knew meant danger. It was a voice that said, “What we need in our house right now is one more brain-damaged animal.”

I knew the voice well. That sweet, irresistible voice is my wife’s trump card. No matter what we’re arguing about, when the voice comes out, the discussion is as over as Kathy Gifford’s career.

Here’s an example:

My wife: “So, I was thinking, maybe we should sell all of your books and CDs and your car and your birth certificate, and then I can use the money to buy new shoes.”

Me: “I’d rather take a bath in a tub full of fire ants.”

My wife (now using the voice): “Please? I’d really like some new shoes. And by the way, I double-checked my math, and it looks like we’ll need to sell your computer, too. And probably all of your pants.”

Me: “Yes, dear, that sounds like a good idea.” Later that day, my neighbors watch from their windows as I load my car with all of my possessions and head to the pawn shop, wearing nothing but a T-shirt, shoes, and a pair of tighty-whiteys.

So you can understand the futility of arguing with my wife about the three-legged dog now that the voice had come out. The best I could hope to do was distract her.

“I think my appendix just burst!” I said, dropping to the ground and clutching my stomach.

“It looks like it’s going to rain,” my wife said, stepping over me. “We’d better get Three-legger indoors before he gets all wet.”

Note the subtle yet important transition that occurred during that exchange. The dog was no longer referred to as the three-legger. The dog had simply become ‘Three-legger.’ Now he had a name. He was as good as pooping in my bed.

My wife squinted across the parking lot at the dog, which stood teetering in the wind like a cardboard cutout. I could tell she was sizing him up. Would the reindeer antlers we make our pets wear at Christmas fit onto Three-legger’s head, or would we have to buy another pair? Would Three-legger be able to make it up the stairs at night, or would we have to move our bed down into the kitchen? Would there be room for Three-legger on the bed, or would Jeff have to sleep on the floor?

I, for one, think that we have enough “special needs” animals living under our roof. Consider, for example, our senile cat, Mr. Puddy, whose immense fatness makes it impossible for him to execute even the most basic of cat duties, such as “washing,” “getting up,” and “not peeing on our furniture.” He spends most of his day sprawled out on our living room carpet, his fat spreading out across the floor like pancake batter in a skillet.

Apart from relieving himself on our couch, Mr. Puddy has a few additional less-than-desirable habits, not the least of which is his tendency to bite anything that is moving. He opens his mouth and comes charging like an angry slug in slow-motion, his head wobbling from side to side in nearsighted confusion.

So, to summarize, Mr. Puddy is an extremely old, extremely obese cat who can’t clean himself, pees on our furniture, and likes to bite us. While some people (me) might argue that Puddy’s time on this earth has expired, others (my wife) would argue that the logical solution is to invest lots of money in cat anti-depressants, which she then must force down Puddy’s throat as I try to hold him down and get all the skin clawed off of my forearms.

Just to balance things out, we also have an extremely tiny, extremely needy kitty, Maggie, who at all times must have at least one part of her touching one or more parts of you. Which is fine, unless her part is a claw and your part is your bare stomach while you’re sleeping.

If she can’t manage to wake you up by carving her initials into your skin, Maggie will resort to using the little air-raid siren lodged in her throat.

“Reeeeeeaaaaaeeeearrrrrrrr!” says Maggie at 3 a.m.

“Aaaack!” says my wife, shooting straight up in bed and smashing me in the face with her elbow.

“Hoooo!” I say, falling out of bed and onto Mr. Puddy.

“Errrrr!” says Mr. Puddy, biting my leg.

“Roo! Roo! Roo! Arrrooooo!” says our dog, Henry, adding, “Arf! Arf! Arf!” and “Yap!”

Faithful readers of my column (by which I mean my mother) will remember the article I wrote about Henry last February. For those who missed it: imagine one of those wind-up toys shaped like chattering teeth. Now imagine that toy powered by a jet engine. Cover it with fur and put one of your favorite shoes in its mouth, and you’ve got Henry.

Could our house possibly contain another “challenged” animal? And more importantly, could my self-esteem handle me being knocked down from No. 4 to the No. 5 slot on my wife’s priority list by a three-legged dog?
As she marched across the parking lot to retrieve our new baby, my wife was stopped short by the call of a woman from an adjacent house.

“C’mere, Bonkers,” called the woman. “Here, boy!”

And just like that, our Three-legger went galloping away (ba-da-bump, ba-da-bump) into the arms of another family. My wife spun around and got back into the car without a word.

As we drove to the mall, I waited, and waited, and waited, and there it was – my wife started sniffling.

“It’s OK, baby, we’ll find another dog, maybe even one with four whole legs,” I said.

“But I loved Three-legger!” my wife said.

“I know you did, honey,” I said, making a left turn towards the Humane Society.

For example, there is my inability to throw out a tissue, because maybe, just maybe, there is a useable inch on it somewhere that might come in handy later.

And there’s my mental blockage that prevents me from putting my clothes into the hamper. Instead, I’ve created a clothing purgatory on the floor where the clothes that are not-quite-dirty but not-exactly-clean have piled up into a monstrous heap that has sprouted arms and legs and I’m pretty sure is responsible for the mysterious disappearance of our cat.

And then there’s my inability to ever (Ever!) remove my socks. (I know what you’re visualizing right now. Stop it.) I can’t help it. I need them. My wife married me, socks and all, and it’s too late now to ask me to change. My socks. (Riotous laughter.)

But I admit that I probably am to blame for the thing that bothers my wife the most. Namely, my irresistable compulsion to make fun of her while she’s doing yoga. I should probably mention that my compulsion also involves lying down on the couch with a bag of potato chips and giving play-by-play color commentary.

“Whoa! You’ll feel that one tomorrow!”

“Those unitards really ride up on you, huh?”

“Wow, that’s not a flattering position!”

“That one should be illegal!”

“Smile for the camera!”

It’s really nothing personal against my wife. I’d pretty much make fun of anyone I caught rolling around on a rubber mat in a Spandex suit in the middle of my living room. Especially if that person was Anna Nicole Smith.

Now, I understand that everyone has his methods of relaxation. What I don’t get is why my wife’s method has to involve a video tape featuring Captain Banana Pants giving yoga instructions in nothing but a pair of immodest purple tights.

“Begin,” says the Captain, “by lifting both legs over your head, like this, and placing your right elbow into your left ear, like this. Good. Now, yank your own head back by the hair and firmly insert a finger into each of your nostrils. Advanced students may opt to insert the entire fist. This position is called Beautiful Flower Drinking Rainwater.

“Now, point two fingers directly at your eyes. Slowly bring your fingers in towards your face. At the last minute, raise your left hand and hold it in front of your nose, thereby blocking your fingers from poking you in the eyes. This is called the Nyuck Nyuck position.

“Lowering yourself to the ground, slowly coil your body into the Cobra position, unhinge your jaw, and swallow your own leg up to the knee cap. And remember, folks – relax! That’s what this is about, after all!”

As the Captain speaks, his students writhe around on the floor, contorting themselves into positions normally reserved for people being eaten by a dinosaur. Meanwhile, my wife is managing to make the whole painful process look easy, gracefully shifting her body from the Spitting Camel into the Surprised Chipmunk with the greatest of ease.

Nobody enjoys my wife’s yoga sessions more than the dog, who always manages to squeeze in a round of his favorite game, King of the Mountain, on my wife’s head. One minute, I’m watching my wife stretch out on the floor. The next thing I know, our little Jack Russel is perched on the back of her head with a look that says, “Look what a good dog I am!”

“Mmmph!” my wife yells.

“What?” I say.

“Mmmmmmph!!!!” she yells.

“I can’t understand you, there’s a dog on your head,” I explain.

And then we laugh. Well, I laugh.

I can usually lure the dog off my wife’s head by waving one of my potato chips around in the air for a few minutes. I’d get off the couch and help, but I don’t want to get my socks dirty.

Another hazard of my wife’s yoga is our cats’ drive-by rubbings. The cats, who have been lying in one spot giving themselves a bath since 1998, decide that now is the time to show how much they love my wife by running up and flopping all over her feet. Which is OK if she’s standing up straight, but a little precarious if she’s in the middle of a One-handed Inverted Moose, for example.

I think the most unsettling thing about her yoga has got to be the breathing exercises, which involve the kind gutteral snorts and phlegmy growls one might expect to hear from a congested grizzly bear. The first time I heard it, I thought an angry rhinocerous had somehow meandered its way into our living room. I ran in from the kitchen with a flyswater and a frying pan, ready for battle, to find my wife in a leotard with her leg wrapped around her neck three times, a cat stuck to her shin, and our dog perched on her forehead.

Who said that yoga wasn’t a spectator sport?