Ok. The difference between married guys and single guys is mostly to do with smarts. Single guys think they're smart. They got freedom, they got lots of girls in their phone book, they got a pad decorated just like they like it. Single guys think their smart.

Single guys are idiots. And deep down inside, they know it.

Married guys aren't idiots. They're stupid, but not idiots. Want to know how they know they're stupid? Duh, ask their wives. Married guys can't do anything right. Either they're watching too much TV, or not cleaning up enough, or not changing the diapers enough, or not... well... just not being enough. Single guys look at married guys and think, "boy, what morons!" But again, that's because single guys are idiots.

And the problem is, married guys will sometimes start to believe the single guys, and start acting like idiots. It's so damned hard to be a husband 24x7. You try to do good at work, but they make you eat shit because they know that you have a mortgage and kids and if you don't eat shit here you really will be eating shit on a breadline somewhere.

You try to do good at home, but you live with someone who is quite patently insane, a hostage to their own hormones. Every once in awhile (you only wish it was once a month) their head will spin around and the face that meets yours would make Linda Blair blanche. You're not quite sure, and you sure as hell would never say it out loud, but you think this person might be the vanguard of some sort of alien invasion.

You think you know how to deal with this, because you grew up watching your dad deal with an insane person, but your dad ended up listening to the idiots and you're pretty sure at least some of the stuff you learned was wrong. The problem is that you can't tell.

And your kids. Jesus, your kids. How can any human being have that much energy? They're monsters. You're constantly stuck in this catch-22. You know if you don't discipline them, when they're 16 they're going to end up in a trailer park somewhere calling the 1-800 number for the Springer show because their kids held up a liquor store and got caught because the training wheels wouldn't let them pedal faster than the squad cars. But if you don't discipline them you know, you know, that they'll end up being one of those quiet types that hangs out with other kids in trench coats that mix strange smelling stuff in the basement and take an unhealthy interest in "Guns and Ammo" and read "How to Become and Effective Terrorist in 16 Easy Steps".

So the truly stupid married guys, the ones who had a clue but lost it, end up trying to step back into the world of the single guy by messing it up with booze, other women, gambling, or simple neglect. It can't happen. Because, at heart, we're designed to be in pairs. Once you get the knack, a guy can't become single again. You just become this sad thing that drinks alone and watches NYPD blue by himself and sobs at Kodak commercials. It's been scientifically proven that a married man, once single, either marries again or fucking dies.

So why, if it's so goddamned hard, are married guys geniuses and single guys morons? Who elected us the kings of the western fucking world?

Because there's nothing quite like the spark in her eyes when she looks at you, when all you did was pick a stupid flower off the path, a stupid, didn't cost anything at all, not-even-half-an-inch-across flower, and put it in her hair. There's nothing like being able to make enough cash to let her buy whatever the hell she pleases and be so cool about it she doesn't notice and yells at you when you stumble going out of the store. There's nothing like having someone that can think and talk run up to you when you come home from eight hours of hell and not care a damned bit what you look or feel or smell like and love you more than life itself.

I don't look to my dad for how to keep a wife. I look to my grandad, who separated from his wife by putting her in the ground and then followed her six months later. I look to my dad for how to raise kids, because in spite of the fact that yes, I do have a mother and yes, I am totally grateful and yes, she did 90% of the work, the stuff that moms do is stuff that I can't do. So I look at how my brother and I turned out and take lessons from my dad so that I can be that kind of dad.

And so this morning I took the mysterious horse pills setting on my plate, without complaint, even if I did end up pissing Gatorade all day today.

Because I may be stupid, but I'm not a moron.

I do not know where I end and you begin,
I do not know where life will lead, or what tragedies may fall
I only know that I am complete only in your eyes
and your smile is my world