I recently wrote about how men will
always lay claim to the best deal on buying and repairing cars.
Turns out, that's not all:
We recently hosted a dinner party on
our backyard patio. A gentleman we shall refer to as Mr. X, pointed
to our back fence and said, "I see you got a rain gauge back
there. How much rain did you get last night?"
"As a meteorologist would say, just
a trace. Didn't even register," I replied. I then thought back
to Memorial Day weekend when it rained for four straight days.
"Yeah, but Memorial Day weekend we got 3.75 inches."
"Really? That's great, we got
five inches at our house."
Overhearing our conversation, Mr. Y
from across the table shouted, "That's all? We got six inches!"
I rolled my eyes while they smirked at
me. "Well, my rain gauge is partially under a tree so it
probably missed a lot."
"I don't know," Mr. X said.
"You probably got extra in there after it stopped raining and
the tree was dripping. I bet you only got about 3.5 inches."
"Whether it's four inches or six
inches, I think we can all agree that we got some badly needed rain,"
I said trying to end the conversation on common ground.
"Woah, hold on there," Mr. Y
said. "Who said anything about four inches?"
"Well I just rounded up from 3.75
to make it easier."
"You can't do that," Mr. Y
said.
"Yeah," Mr. X chimed in. "We
only get what, ten inches a year? If we were talking millions that
might be okay, but that's more than a rounding error."
"Right," Mr. Y added. "I
mean in baseball, if one buy is batting .249 and another guy is
batting .251 they don't say one is a .200 hitter and the other is a
.300 hitter. They're basically the same but rounding makes one an
all-star and the other guy a chump."
"Whatever," I said. "Can't
we just be thankful for the rain?"
"Sure, some of us more thankful
than others," Mr. X said with a laugh.
"Yeah, your rain gauge needs
another weekend like that to catch up with mine," Mr. Y said.
I gave up and waited for them to
high-five each other which they never did but that could be because
Mr. X still felt inadequate to Mr. Y.
I don't know what I did wrong, bought a
house on the wrong side of town, bought a lot with too many trees,
didn't pray hard enough or maybe I just put the rain gauge on the
wrong side of the yard. But the rest of the town was enjoying their
five or six inches while I got stuck with a lousy 3.75. I could hear
the lawn mocking me. I imagined the lawn might leave me for Mr. X or
Mr. Y.
Later I realized I had it all wrong and
came up with the perfect solution.
"Next time we have a party,"
I told St. Pauli Girl, "all male guests are required to bring
documentation of their last car purchase, a receipt from their last
car repair and their rain gauge with a signed notarized affidavit of
the correct level of the rain gauge. If not, they can just stay home
or shut the hell up."
St. Pauli Girl didn't even look up from
her book. "Yeah, men are always lying about the size of their
rain gauges."
