The Geiger Counter

My wife, who exists

From time to time, people tell me they are under the impression I am a single parent, because I never mention my wife in these columns. Actually, my wife, who exists and is named Greta, doesn’t appear here for one particular reason. 

The reason, of course, is that making humorous (read: true) observations about one’s spouse in a newspaper column is the type of thing that often ends up mentioned in court, during contentious divorce proceedings, and it’s my sincere desire that my columns never end up as “exhibit A” in any trial, particularly my own. 

The truth is, my wife is simply too busy to be a character in these stories. She is a successful graphic artist, and when she’s not at work, she is usually busy cleaning up messes in our home. This sounds helpful, but she and I have very different definitions of the word “mess,” so it’s actually a bit complicated. 

I define a mess as “a disordered, untidy, offensive, or unpleasant state or condition.” I got that from a place called the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Greta, on the other hand, defines a mess as “something belonging to Matt Geiger that is located within the Geiger home.” I’m not sure which dictionary she currently uses, but I want to chat with their editorial board. 

She also hates “clutter,” which is a mess’s cousin. Again, I subscribe to the standard definition, which is “a crowded or confused mass or collection.” My wife believes, quite strongly, that clutter is “multiple things belonging to Matt Geiger that are located within the Geiger home.”

Each day, for the past 15 years, I have, at some point, left the room to take a phone call or answer the door and politely tell a political candidate to, for the love of god, please leave us alone, and returned to discover that some of my things have disappeared. It can be a jacket I laid on the arm of a chair, a book I was reading, or a sandwich with one bite taken out of it. I’m pretty sure that once, it was a pair of socks I was currently wearing.  

“Where did my [stuff] go?” I wonder, looking around in confusion. 

“Oh, that? I put it away!” Greta says proudly. 

Here we encounter another word my wife defines differently than me. 

I think of “away” as essentially the antonym of “near.” I got my definition many years ago, from Sesame Street. If something is “away,” it has essentially fled from me and is no longer useful. 

My wife defines it as a transitive verb meaning “to conceal or keep secret.” If she says she put something “away,” I can pretty much guarantee she hid it. My entire marriage is one big scavenger hunt. 

My wife probably thinks I’m a moron, assuming she defines “moron” as a person who knows and uses the correct definitions of words. 

Greta is constantly putting my things “away.” Like beauty, truth, justice and any migratory bird, “away” is not a single, fixed point on a map. It might be a drawer or a closet, or somewhere in our garage, but I’ve never found it, and I’m pretty sure it’s where all my stuff is. Perhaps “away” is on the bottom of the sea. Sometimes I suspect it’s simply a synonym for “the garbage can.”

Anything I set down will be swiftly removed from the premises, which is why I often wander the halls of our home with all my favorite things in my arms. 

Now, I know what you must be thinking. “Matt is a slob, and his wife is neat and organized.” You are only half correct. I am quite messy, primarily because I don’t feel like I’m the boss of most inanimate objects and I guess I just trust them to get where they need to go of their own volition. 

But Greta, while hygienic and fairly organized, actually has a lot of stuff, and it is, well, everywhere in our home. Each room of our house is filled with devices and decorations that she claims “go there” – things that “go there” are never to be “put away” - but it all looks suspiciously like messes or clutter to my eye. I don’t move them, however, because they aren’t my things, and I am a nice person.

Greta’s most recent grievance with me was that my books are everywhere. Our eight-year-old daughter recently had to count how many books we have in our home for the public library’s Summer Reading Program, and the tally was roughly 2,000. So yes, there are a lot of books; on shelves, on coffee tables, in drawers and on the floor. I probably don’t read as much as people think, but I do like to know that, if I’m ever incapacitated and can’t walk to safety, there will be a good 19th century novel or a modern account of fatal bear attacks within reach. My car has many half-read books in it, just in case I’m ever pinned in a wreck and need something to leaf through while I wait to expire. 

Last week, my wife complained of the “mess” of books in our living room, and I looked at the works to which she was gesturing. “But, Greta, those are MY books!”

I know what you are thinking here, so let me explain that when I say “MY” books, I don’t mean books I purchased at Barnes and Noble and therefore own. I mean books I wrote. Books I wrote about how much I love my family, which I feel is not insignificant to my general point. 

“Greta, you are literally complaining about having to look at a book that your husband wrote about how devoted he is to you and your daughter,” I said. 

“Yes,” she replied, clearly wishing she had married an illiterate, nomadic sheepherder* so that there would be a few less books on the coffee table. “But that’s not where they go.”

“It’s embarrassing when friends come over and see this,” she later added. 

First of all, the hypothetical people she’s referring to are our friends, and I would never be friends with anyone who cared how clean or messy my house is, so these people she’s talking about can’t even actually exist. They are a logical impossibility. 

Secondly, and this part I said out loud, “They are books. If people see lots of books lying around, they will think we are smart! It’s the best, easiest way to dupe people into thinking we are intelligent!”

But apparently, Greta would rather people think we are tidy and dumb than messy and wise, so many of my books – even the ones I wrote - get “put away” when I am not around. 

Life is merely a succession of events in which we ask ourselves: Does this go here? We spend our years wondering, “Where does this belong?” A hat. A feeling. An idea. A job or a child. Where should things go? Where do they fit? It applies to people, too. And no matter how much of my stuff my wife moves, I always know where I belong. Here, with her, searching for my missing things.  

 

*If you are a nomadic sheepherder and you are reading this and are offended by it, you are clearly literate. Therefore, this is not in reference to you. 

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