Forever In Debt to Your Priceless Advice

Do you think that to be happy in a relationship, two people have to have comparable intellectual prowess?

I’ve met a lot of people who say things like, “I love my wife because she challenges me,” or “my boyfriend is great because he doesn’t let me get away with things.” It makes sense, of course, to want to be with a mate that serves as an intellectual counter in your life. But my question is, for an educated person (and education comes in many forms, formal and informal), is it possible to be content with someone who is well, not very educated? (Perhaps the better word is “intellectual,” rather than “educated,” if that helps.)

But let’s assume that a husband is significantly less intellectual than his wife, does it mean that she is “shallow”? Does it mean that she has an empty space in her life? Let’s say she’s an engineer, finds her work and co-workers interesting and stimulating, loves her book club, and goes to see theatre regularly with her brother. Her husband is kind, caring, a fantastic father to children they both adore, and shares with his wife a love of restaurants, the Kansas City Chiefs, gardening and kayaking. But husband doesn’t read much beyond the sports section in the USA Today, and would rather be caught dead than spend time doing traditional “cultural activities.” And he has a 12th grade education.

In other words, they have much, but not everything in common. But frankly, while they have interests in common, she’s never found a single thing he’s said remotely intellectually challenging. And she swears she’s delightfully happy because she thinks it is absurd to expect one-stop shopping in life. Moreover, her job is stressful (but satisfying), and it can be so full of “intellectual” conflict with co-workers and clients, one of the things she claims to cherish about being at home is that it’s a significantly more harmonious environment.

And because husband and wife aren’t real people, I am asking people to judge them – no, actually, judge her. Forget the fact that they have kids, and go back to the beginning of the relationship. If you were friends with wife, would you tell her she “could do better” than husband? Would you think it?

Is it reasonable – or just lazy – to value being content over being challenged? Is she compromising herself? Her self-worth? Her gender?

It's Cliche, But I Know Why They're Called Northworst

I am sitting at my computer desk on Friday morning, leisurely nursing a cup of tea, going over the latest work-related news on the internet preparing for a pleasant (if slightly hungover) morning working in my skivvies in my living room. The phone rings, I ignore it, and it rings again a bit later, and a friend is on the line.


The reason I’m working from home is because it’s closer to the airport than my office, and I’m flying out that afternoon to the storied Quad Cities of the Great American Plains. [Ten points to anyone who can name all four without use of a reference aid.] A friend of mine is getting married at a small country church in the middle of an Iowa cornfield on Saturday, and I’m looking forward to the event and the mini-reunion nature of out-of-town weddings of former classmates.


My friend, the one who was calling, had just been called by a reservations agent for Northwest Airlines. (I had just missed a similar call.) My friend, his wife, and I are all scheduled to fly from National Airport (only tourists, newscasters and right-wing freaks call it “Reagan,” thank you very much. I’ve got no objection to throwing RWR’s name on Trade Centers and aircraft carriers, but keep it off airports in towns where he couldn’t muster a majority vote, OK?) We are supposed to fly to Minneapolis-Saint Paul (MSP), with a two-hour layover, then off to Moline-Quad Cities Airport.


Well, there are “mechanical difficulties” for our flight to Moline from MSP. Eight hours from now. They’ve cancelled the flight. And they cannot get us into Moline before Saturday morning as the other flights are all full. But wait, there are later flights? All full. So why not cancel one of those flights, and use the plane for my flight? Why pick my flight to cancel, why not pick another one? Later, I discover that some of the people from the flight that was cancelled were booked on the later flight. Why not us?


OK, let’s make the best of this. Can we get to Chicago? Sure, but it’s a three-hour drive. OK, how about Cedar Rapids? One-and-a-half hours. Not nearly as bad. Seats on that plane? Sure, we’re rebooked, and still getting into the QC’s around 10:30 after the drive in a rental car (which somehow we are paying for?) Get to MSP, and wander down to out gate for the flight to Cedar Rapids. We get to the gate, and look at the monitor.


Cancelled. That’s right, the rebooked flight (into a city 100 miles from our destination and several hours later) is also cancelled due to “mechanical failure”. Somehow, we get onto a later flight to Cedar Rapids. Later, I discovered a pair of people who were sold tickets to get to Moline, and were willing to go to Cedar Rapids, but they didn’t have seats for them by then. Why did we get on, and they didn't? What possible rhyme or reason is there to this clusterfck of a business? Shocking that their stock is worthless.


And how on earth did they not know earlier that they weren’t going to have enough planes to get people to Cedar Rapids? Or is there some pimply-faced recent Big Ten graduate with a degree in “Business” that makes decisions as wise as those that are exercised by this scourge of mass transportation? OK, we’ll cancel this flight, but wait until people are in the middle of their flightplan so that we have to pay to put them in a hotel, that’s the way that to save the most costs. If we’d have gone to Chicago in the first place we would have been in the QC’s two hours earlier. How horrendous can one company be?


Then Sunday we had to get home.


I was returning to National (not Reagan) Airport via Detroit (DTW). My flight from Moline to DTW yesterday was, as appears to be NW’s invariable custom, oversold. My friends decide to get on the plane, but I take the free roundtrip ticket and agree to get on a later flight (5 pm instead of 10 am departure). Now I'm going into Dulles instead of National, and don't get in until 10:50 instead of 3:30, but I’m addicted to travel like a crack addict is to tiny glass viles, so I bite on the bargain.


And thank God I did. My friends get to DTW, and their (i.e., "my") connecting flight to National (not Reagan) is cancelled! NW can't get them to any of the three airports in metro DC, so they have to get on a Delta flight to Atlanta, then get sent to Baltimore – about 75 minutes away from their home – yet still don't land until after midnight.


I got off my plane at Dulles and head to the ticket counter to cajole Northwest into giving me a taxi voucher, but it’s 11 o’clock and there’s no one there. I thought about getting a taxi and just sending them the bill, but decided that I’d rather deal with a bus ride back to my apartment than have to quarrel over a 50 spot with customer service agents of this corporate mess. The bus was three bucks, and at least I was in bed asleep about 1. My friends weren't home until after 230 and no free voucher.


What a total nightmare. And the worse part? Somehow I thought I got a deal by getting a free flight coupon…I mean, that means I have to get on another Northwest flight in the next 12 months.


As Johnny Knoxville recently said, “It's kinda like catching herpes from Audrey Hepburn: You're bummed about the herpes, but you're psyched you got them from her.”

I Used to Sometimes Try to Catch Her, But Never Even Caught Her Name

The playful nymph. Asian butterfly, gaily floating about, morphs into Eastern yellowjacket, striking with ease at the vulnerable underbelly of her hapless and hopeless victims. The fluttering, flirty, flimsical femme fatale. You dangerously hover about with coy smiles, playful hands, and silly words that turn men into boys and melt iron hearts. Philosophers suggest that women learn to flirt with their male ancestors to gain their favor – in all of Siam, can there be a woman who is spared the spoils of her father? Cheekbones that rise like the sun, smiles that haunt the soul, sparkling, slightly hidden dark eyes that invade and conquer the id. This diminutive sprite, with slender limbs like a palm tree, narrow shoulders, delicate hands; oriental chili pepper, hot as an equatorial sun, brilliantly blazing a scorched earth. Exotic yet familiar, foreign while domestic, forbidden but attainable. Angel of Ayutthaya, Scamp of Sukhothai, insurmountable obstacle to the Middle Path, infect the world with virtue and vice.

A Hangover and a Black Eye

I awaken, sensing that dullness and confusion that is a hangover. Am I at home? Thankfully. Am I alone? Yes, I may begin this process with peace and tranquility. What did I do last night to feel this bad? What was that bartender's name? Dear God, do I have to go to the bathroom.

I swing my feet out of bed, thud, thud. In my malaise I drag my bare feet across the hardwood of my home. I've left the toilet seat up. Sweet relief. A wash of the hands at the bathroom sink, while I stare at myself in the mirror, searching for bloodshot eyes and dark circles beneath. I don't look all that bad, but I do need to shave.

The dehydration of excessive alcohol use is exacerbated by the fact that I've donated blood earlier in the week. I don't usually have headaches. Turn on the computer, head to the kitchen. "Water", I say to myself, using SpongeBob's voice the time he went to visit Sandy inside her underwater air-filled lair. I fill up a souvenir Cleveland Indians cup that I got several years ago at Spring Training in Winter Haven with water from the Brita pitcher. (Of course, the plastic mug was filled with beer when it was purchased.) Head to the medicine cabinet: milk thistle and men's multivitamin for the hangover, and fish oil capsules and a zinc supplement for overall health. I sit down at the computer, and I finally notice the burn.

That wicked warm, oddly familiar feeling of heartburn. Or, more clinically, gastroesophageal reflux disease induced by a hiatal hernia. I prefer just to say, "I got stomach problems." The constant, discomforting warmth. That damned cheeseburger last night! And the pommes frites. Why do I put such toxic, manipulated filth into my body? "Alcohol quickly depresses inhibitions and judgment," says the website of a random 12 step program. Right, got it. Where are the tums? I'm not going back on that Nexium crap, the stuff is almost a buck-a-day even with health insurance. Why on earth did you eat deep-fried foods twice in two days, you fat, ignorant boob? Take a Tagamet. Doesn't help that much. Chew on a few rolaids, no relief is spelled. Wait, wait for the bubbling stomach acid to recede back from my esophagus. "Down, down," I sing to my stomach a la Fred Schneider in "Rock Lobster."

Afternoon sets in, and of course I end up at a Mexican restaurant, just what GERD-boy here needs. "So we are having margaritas," suggests one of my dining companions. Yes, yes, let's add alcohol to those fried tortilla chips on the table, perfect.

But the tagamet has begun to work, and the margarita eased the alcohol withdrawal. It's late afternoon now, and the celly's jingling with social calls. The weekend is here. The evening shift bar workers are setting up shop. The office worker's workday comes to a close. After a nap, I bet a can of beer will be awfully tasty.

We've each only one life to live, right?

That's What I Savor

"What would you like to drink?" he asked her, as he stood in front of the liquor cabinet.

"What do they have here?"

"Pretty much a full bar, martinis, margaritas, there might be some wine, and then there's some beer..." As he offered the choices, she opened the refrigerator and reached into an open 12-pack of cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. She pulled the silver, red, white and blue can out of the icebox and set it on the kitchen counter. The cold can of Pabst took on a Middle Earth mist, a blurry whitish hue when removed from the refrigerator. She popped open the can, kerr-ACK, and lifted it to her mouth.

She left the kitchen, sat down, and reclined across half a couch, leaning into the sofa's right arm. Her tight, white-ribbed tanktop clinged to her supple upper body. Her long, slender arms laid across her stomach, with her right hand holding the perspiring Blue Ribbon in the inside of her left elbow. "This is the original Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer," says the can, "Nature's choicest products provide its prized flavor." The claim could equally apply to the girl with the dark, short-cropped hair consuming the 12 ounces of golden goodness. "Selected as America's Best in 1893." Not bad at all for a girl her age.

She again raised her arm, the thin upper arm flexing as her delicate wrist escorted the finest hops and grains down her throat. Qwup, qwup, ahh. She looked to her right, away from the room, and her green eyes glistened in the satisfaction of the red-sashed, hand-held barrel of honey-touched lager. She let out a soft sigh. She placed the can on her bare clavicle, resting the aluminum cylinder just below the bottom of a simple, white rock necklace. She took another drink of her PBR. She sat up some, curling her legs under her, and rested the can on the blue jeans covering her right knee.

Oh beautiful, lovely girl. Ye of hopsy hotness, malted magnificence. You sweet, effervescent soulful wonder. Simple, sexy, award-winning source of unspeakable pleasure. Satisfy this unquenchable thirst!