Wearing the double standard

I've been observing how married couples dress after they pass the 10-year mark, and there seems to be a pattern. As always, there are exceptions, but generally the husbands tend to dress far more casually than the wives do. And even for the husbands who dress well, it's usually because their wives dress them.

I'm sure you've seen middle-aged couples in the mall where she's dressed up in a smart outfit with a matching purse, and he's wearing torn jeans and a sweat shirt, both of which fitted him several years and hundreds of Big Macs ago. The reason for this vast discrepancy in the way married men and women dress is because men choose clothes based on how they make them feel, whereas women choose clothes based on how they make them look. Men are generally less concerned about their appearance and married men even less so. Whenever you see a dress code at a function or a club, trust me, they're talking to the married men. Single men are still making a sales presentation. Married men have closed the deal and are just looking to honor the contract without losing all of their dignity. So my advice to the wives out there is to give up on getting your husband to change his clothes because he doesn't look good. Instead you have to make the clothes he's wearing now make him feel bad. I suggest a digital camera or a full-length mirror.

No time for safety

When you're newly married and have young children in the home, you really appreciate all of the safety precautions in products and appliances: the childproof bottle tops, the extra layers of packaging, the safety lock on the butane lighter. But once you hit middle age and the kids are gone, your priorities change. Safety has decreased in value. Time is the real asset. When you've got a headache, you want that bottle to open quickly, not safely. When you want to light the barbecue or a candle, you don't want to have to use both hands; that would mean putting down the TV remote. Whenever you make things safe, you automatically make them more complicated. We don't want or need that anymore. We'd rather have things simple and dangerous. Insisting that life needs to be complicated and safe is the reason half of us are asleep by 9 o'clock every night.

Times when a middle-aged man should say "No"

• When the boss asks him to speak his mind.
• When a strange woman asks him for anything.
• When he's alone at the Boat Show.
• When the waitress starts looking pretty.
• When the cops asks if he knows anything.
• When his wife asks, "Do you have a problem?"

Waste not waist shot

My wife is fanatical about food going bad. If a salad sits out on the counter for too long or if meat spends a few days in the refrigerator or if the milk looks at her the wrong way, they're gone. She starts every day by reading the "best before" labels on everything in the kitchen. And if it's expired, or even if today's the day, it's outa there. Now as a normal man, a hunter, nothing upsets me more than to see perfectly good food thrown away -- food that I could have eaten sooner but was holding back out of a fear of gluttony and its after-effects. And there are thousands of men out there just like me. On Garbage Day Eve, try driving through a suburb at three in the morning and notice all the kitchen lights on. If you could peek in the windows you'd see men like me, with a chair pulled up to the open fridge door as they pick their way through death row, getting one last mouthful of pleasure before the offenders are sent to the end of the driveway by the grim reaper who sleeps in righteous serenity just a few steps away.

Quote of the day

"Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed." -- Red Green