I’ve been talking about getting a larger motorcycle lately. I tell my wife that I’d really like something just a little bigger, something that won’t settle down on the back tire when I have a passenger and hit a bump. Something that will get up and go out of the driveway without me worrying about the next gravel truck coming round the bend.
I tell her this and she just looks at me like I’m wasting money.
So one day I just happened to mention this to some friends at the coffeehouse one day and one of them tells me to drop hints that feeding my hobby keeps me from “wandering” in other ways.
What? I say. Threaten her with marital infidelity if I don’t get my way?
Don’t threaten, he says, just drop hints that wandering around the roads on a bigger bike keeps you from wandering around with some young thing.
So there it is. You got a hankerin’ for some side fling with a little chippy? Well don’t let those wanton feelings take control; go get yourself a hobby instead. Is this the true secret to marital bliss?
Besides my fondness for motorcycles I’m a bicycle fanatic as well (have you noticed that there’s this two-wheeled theme running in my life). At any given moment I might have upwards to five or six bikes in various stages of disassembly while I tinker with this wheel or that brake or those gears. Never has my wife ever told me to pick up the parts and get rid of the damn things. She’s always tolerated my fondness for bicycles. Probably because they’re cheap (I usually work on old bikes purchased from second’s stores) and they provide a level of exercise I might not otherwise get. The bicycles can also create some common ground between the sons and me.
But it’s worth saying again: never has my wife complained about my bicycles laying about the barn. Maybe she knows something I don’t know. Let him have a harmless hobby like bicycles and he will never wander.
Now I have a friend suggesting I use the same approach to getting a new motorcycle. Well, not a new one, a used one that’s just a little bigger. Hmmm, have I been a fool to my spouse all along? Have I been a pawn in her little game to keep me home and happy?
And of course all this discussion brings up another issue. I’ve had a few acquaintances that have dallied a bit on the side. Should I perhaps suggest a hobby for them? Maybe get them to take an interest in kite flying or model shipbuilding – anything that will divert their attention away from that cute little babe who’s been showing them attention.
Then again, maybe it’s the person and not the hobby. I suspect my wife knows that it’s my love and respect for her that really keeps me at home – that and the fact that we have a really great relationship (nyahhh to all of you who don’t). So now it appears that fooling around won’t be much of a useful threat to feeding and expanding my hobby. This raises a new issue: I really want a bigger motorcycle, what kind of trickery must I employ to get her to let me buy it?
