VERY SPATIAL RELATIONSHIPS

My wife is smarter than I am. She has earned more money than I have. She is far better looking and makes a better parent.

I wanted to tell you this up front because I’m going to make fun of her now, and I don’t want you to think I’m a total jerk. As you’ll see, I’m still not taking any chances.

This all started a few weeks ago when I was driving Mary Ellen’s car and noticed that in six months, she had gone exactly the number of miles allotted to her on the lease. Pleased we had made the right consumer choice, I used the circumstance to initiate some lively marital patter.

“Mary Ellen, guess how many miles you’ve driven since you got the car in August?” I asked.

“Heavens, I don’t know. If I had to guess, 800 miles.”

“Eight hundred miles? You’ve had the car for six months. You’ve driven somewhere every day, seven days a week for six months. How can you say 800 miles? Just going to church on Sunday is 300 miles a month.”

(My wife has an MBA, she’s been a vice president of a major hospital, a Butler University administrator and her IQ is 20 points higher than mine. Okay, back to making fun of her.) 

I began to realize that Mary Ellen has no sense of distance, speed or time.

 “Mary Ellen, how far is it from New York to California?”

“I’ll say 50,000 miles.”

“That’s not even close. You would see that if we drove there.”

“Well, don’t go by my odometer. According to you, it was 6000 miles off.”

“Let’s try it another way. If you got in the car in New York and drove straight to California, how long would it take?”

“In months?”

“Months? We could travel from New York to LA in less than a week.”

“Not if we stop in Vegas. What’s the big rush?”

(My wife dresses better than I do, has better manners, understands movies and speaks German. Okay, now back to the needling.)

“Mary Ellen, how far is it from the Earth to the moon?”

“Not a clue. I’ll say five million miles.”

Wow, I bet that even got a wince from Carl Sagan. “Actually, about 240,000 miles.”

“I think these are trick questions. Whose car are we using?”

(My wife graduated in the top 10% of her class and is a gourmet cook).

“Okay, one more chance. If you get this answer within a million miles, I’ll buy you an expensive candlelight dinner. How far is it around the Earth at the equator?”

“Now, that has to be a million miles.”

“No, but you did just describe Christopher Columbus’ recurring nightmare. It’s actually 25,000 miles.”

“My, it IS a small world. I thought that was just a Walt Disney expression.”

(She has a beautiful figure and is very sensitive)

“One more chance to redeem yourself. How fast does light travel?” 

“Hmmm. Well, you say California is 3000 miles away, and my hairdresser is 10 miles from the house, and the moon is 240,000 miles from Earth, and the equator is 25,000 miles around. Keeping that in mind, I’d say light travels 186,000 miles per second.” 

“I’m absolutely dumbfounded! That is correct. How did you do that? You’ve been spoofing me all along. I am so gullible. But to be exact, it’s 186,282 miles per second.”

“I see, so it got faster.”