When traveling with my wife, it is important to realize that she is the boss. If you forget this, you will die.
When I say “you will die,” I don’t mean that men wearing black hoods will publicly execute you, necessarily, my wife might do the honors herself. What I mean is that she has planned our trips to a T and there is no wiggle room for doing fun or touristy things like, for instance, stopping to go pee.
My wife’s talent for being the boss stems from the fact that she is a former math teacher. I remember when she took her exam for her math teaching certification, long ago. She had to study like crazy. I helped by quizzing her with flashcards.
“Uh...” I would begin reading. “The inverse decibel is an absolute, or sublingual when found within the parenthetical equation of a biconditional Centroid Formula, and is thereby a null integer from which popular Pink Floyd album?”
Her answer would be so complex that I had no idea whether it was right or wrong.
So after her response, I would sort of nod and say, “Okay.”
Then she’d say, “Okay? Was my answer right or wrong?”
“Sweetie,” I’d say in a reassuring voice. “There are no right or wrong answers in life, only happy accidents.”
Which doesn’t work for a mathematical person. To a math-wiz, there are no such things as happy accidents, numerically speaking, only the quantified deconstruction of bivalve ellipses as expressed in the linear equation found in EXAMPLE 1:
S=15.9√ (2AB)df>L
So what I’m saying is that as a mathematician, she has an Order of Operations for everything in life, even traveling. And this makes her bossy.
She packs our car a certain way and becomes very annoyed if I so much as scratch my nose using the wrong tone. She plans our itinerary, accommodations, bathroom breaks, books our flights, makes reservations, drives…