Ask Mr. Smartypants

For most of human existence, the vast majority of people worked constantly to provide for their basic needs. It made for terrible conversation over the nightly gruel.

Wife: "What did you do today?"

Husband: "I hunted. You?

Wife: "I gathered."

Husband: "Awesome."

Technology has changed that, but somewhere along the way, we screwed up. We now work every bit as hard and every bit as long as our primitive ancestors did, and spend the proceeds on junk.

As a result, we find ourselves in a culture so frail that if we don't keep buying useless stuff, if we don't keep borrowing money we can't repay to fill oversized homes with sound systems, theaters and the occasional Big Mouth Billy Bass, our society will implode.

Financial experts are begging us to keep borrowing and buying, warning that if we don't, we'll all be eating dog food in a week, and not the yummy kind with gravy but the dry, crunchy stuff.

There is a degree to which working harder to get more stuff makes perfect sense. Working hard for tastier, more nutritious food is smart. Toiling to own a comfortable home is reasonable. Putting in the overtime to pay for heating and air conditioning: I'm in.

These things improve life.

But as the productivity of the American worker exploded after World War II, we biggie-sized everything in our lives except serenity and joy.

The size of the average house doubled, even as the size of the average family declined. Step back from your life and tell me, would you rather have the 1,000 square feet of formal living room and dining room space that you use only on Thanksgiving, or another day off each week.

I'm not unambitious: If I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd probably work just as much as I do now, though on far more interesting writing projects, and wearing far less clothing.

I don't rail against the pursuit of money and land. Money and land are useful - they provide security and opportunity for future generations.

But we're working harder and harder and not only are we not garnering fat bank accounts and rolling acreage, we're getting further in debt.

And I cannot unilaterally decide to work less and joy more. We, as a society, have bought into this harried maze of overwork and overpurchase, so there are no 30-hour-a-week jobs that pay just enough. I don't know anyone working a professional job who's keeping their hours down to 40, or even 50.

As I work 60 or 80 hours a week to buy that third DVD player or pay that outrageous cable bill or afford a house that would have been called a mansion for most of human history, I ask myself:

-- Wouldn't I rather have less stuff, and more time?

-- Did I listen to a favorite album this week? Read a great book? Play Monopoly with my daughter, or go for a swim. Did I take an afternoon nap?

-- Did I make love?

And did I, even once, set foot in that formal living room and dining room I just couldn't do without?

There are milestones all married men reach.

Every married man takes up a habit that disgusts or bores his wife so that he can say, "OK, I'm going to play golf (smoke cigars, kill deer, rebuild carburetors, ice fish). You sure you don't wanna come? I'm gonna miss ya."

This is because every married man eventually becomes mildly allergic to the voices of his beloved family, no matter how much he loves them, and after four or five hours of consecutive waking family time, he must indulge in a hobby his brood cannot stand, just to get some alone time.

Do you seriously think we like model trains? And professional basketball? Basketball was popularized in the mid-20th century as a direct result of wives learning to play golf and watch football.

But the one experience that truly signals a man's credentials as a husband is the day he first mumbles the words (mumbling is a huge part of being a good spouse - clear speech equals divorce), "I can't find a single blessed thing in this house."

Recently, I asked my bride how she had spent her afternoon, and she said, "I reorganized the closets and the dressers. Don't they look great?"

Just the word "reorganize" is ridiculous. If the closet, the pantry or the silverware were chaotic, I would heartily approve an effort to rein it in, but "reorganize" means "It was arranged in a system, but you, my mumble-mouthed man, had figured out the system, so I changed it, lest you become arrogant and self-sufficient."

It's like she's the map to the Whitman's Candy Sampler and she's afraid that once I figure out the pattern, I'll throw her out.

My mother-in-law keeps reorganizing her house. She's a smart woman. She's lived there 40 years. You'd think she'd have gotten it right by now. But things keep moving, and my father-in-law hasn't found a piece of cookware on his own since 1993.

Angela thirsts to reorganize all she surveys. She oversees a 3,000-square-foot house. I control only a tiny office and the garage.

But she covets my spaces, not to have them as her own, but to bend them to her will.

"I'm going to get in there and straighten that out," she'll say, glaring at my sad little cubicle, her eyes glazing over with lust.

And each time she walks through the garage, she takes in the tools, the bikes and the firewood and says, "I've got to get out here and work on this."

I can't find the Tylenol, the Ziploc bags or 75 percent of my underwear, but I'm still fighting the good fight.

So far, I've managed to hold Angela at bay in the office by setting up the computer so it never turns off or goes to screensaver. It's been on for 137 days. She cannot bear to look at it and is now unable to enter the room.

As for keeping her hands off the garage, I think I have the solution.

I'm going to start keeping snakes out there, as a hobby, without tanks. I was going to take up watching pro basketball in the garage, which also would have kept her out, but it just seemed too weird.

Everywhere I go, I encounter people fretting over the headlines, bleating about the bleak economy.

Even I have experienced moments of panic. I am accustomed to maintaining a certain level of comfort and luxury (1996 Nissan Sentras, Honeycrisp apples and Old Spice All-in-One Body Wash/Shampoo/Conditioner/Axle Lube/Massage Oil don't grow on trees), and the newspaper industry is not immune to the downturn.

Actually, the newspaper business IS the downturn. I've considered cashing in my newspaper stock and buying into a slide-rule manufacturing plant or a nice textile mill: Something with a future, is what I'm saying.

But I'm not worried anymore.

One day a few weeks ago, my fear reached a frenzied pitch. I was balancing the checkbook when I realized we have prudently managed to squirrel away a nest egg that, if we were to lose our jobs, would last us through ... happy hour. Seriously, three margaritas, a Sprite with a lid for the nipper and an order of chalupas would pretty much tap us out.

And I imagined it all went bad. And the more horrible stuff I imagined, and accepted, the better I felt.

Here's the absolute worst-case scenario:

My boss calls me in to his office and tells me he's going to have to let me go. I tear my shirt off, pull my pants down 6 inches and run out into the newsroom, tears streaming down my face, bellowing, "DARN IT SIR, NO MEANS NO." I win my lawsuit, and the jury agrees that I have suffered the loss of 100 percent of my self-esteem and sexual confidence, but values the damages at only $1.

Angela loses her job after the magazine market collapses, but shows considerably more decorum than I.

A six-week-long attempt to hawk my book, "Ask Mr. Smartypants," on street corners and door-to-door nets $67.50, two restraining orders and a nasty run-in with a deranged hobo who claims he is the "original straight-up Mr. Smartypants" and threatens to "flip me like a cheese omelette" if I don't get off his turf.

The bank forecloses on the house. When I argue that we have plenty of sweat equity, the bank allows me, in fact, begs me, to keep all sweat-related items.

We are forced to move in with my in-laws in Prosperity. We could move in with my sister and brother-in-law in New York City, but relocating to New York because you're broke is like moving to Fargo because you're chilly.

All kidding aside, that is exactly what would happen if we really lost everything.

I'd get jobs cooking and roofing and waiting tables, we'd live with my wife's folks, it would be a bit cramped, we'd help with their housework and maintenance, they'd help with Quinn.

I'd be out of a job that, while I like it, has me working such long hours that I'm seeing the wife and kids about 16 minutes a day and that pays, on an hourly basis ... the same as cooking, roofing and waiting tables. I'd be losing a house that, while I like it, keeps me constantly consumed with cleaning, raking, mowing and fixing.

And there would still be love, food, an education for my daughter and a place to lay my head.

I'm not worried anymore, because in my mind I've already lost it all. And mostly, I don't miss it.