The collective wife.......

One of the interesting parts of being married thrice is the unusual amount of verbal landmines that you encounter everyday. I have been fortunate enough to marry three women who were better looking, smarter, kinder and gentler than me. With that being said they will bristle up at a moments notice if they are placed in the middle of a story they did not attend. I love to tell stories and some are actually funny. But after 24 years of being married to somebody, occasionally the wrong name has been attached to the wrong location. No offense meant.

This happened Saturday night when I was story telling at Outback and I said wife instead of ex-wife. What could best be described as an icy reply came from Scarlett that she was not there. It must have been a different wife. So that got me to thinking that as a divorced man I need to use the "collective wife". This would be all things wifely in nature. Ex or current shouldn't matter when using the collective wife. Nor should pesky little details like names or faces. After all it is the "wife" I am referring to, not the individual herself. This will prevent many future arguments.

Charlie Sheen could benefit from the "collective wife" or "collective porn star". Larry King would probably live to be 100 if he could use the collective wife and not be forced to remember all those names everyday. President Clinton has already used the collective wife for nefarious purposes. That was not part of my recommendation. The collective wife is a catch all phrase for stories whose details have fallen into the crevices of the mind. Not for cigars to fall into the crevices of....well you follow my logic. The more divorces, the greater need for the collective wife.

Scarlett has been divorced and could use the collective husband but it doesn't work as well for women. Even though women forget details and the names of their current husband just as much as men do, the need for the collective is simply not there. Why? Because most men will either not hear the wrong name being spoken, or simply won't care. Unless a women is complimenting a man on his love making or his golf game he probably won't take note. He might file it away to use at a later date should some sort of irrational argument arise but for the most part it drifts away unnoticed. Being clueless has benefits. You cannot get easily offended if you are unaware. That would make us part of the "collective dumb ass". Guilty as charged.



Till next.....