IRISHMAN FOR HIRE

I just found out that one of my favorite television shows has been cancelled. I knew it had to happen one day but I am still dismayed. The show has given me many hours of great entertainment and in retrospect, it even created one troubling period in my life where I learned an invaluable lesson.

Five years ago, a friend of mine got me hooked on the show Numb3ers. When he first told me about the series, I thought the plot seemed pretty laughable but I promised to watch a couple of episodes. The premise of the show is simple; an FBI agent named Don has a brother named Charlie who is a math genius. Charlie is a consultant to the FBI and through mathematical theorems, he helps Don solve cases.

It sounded pretty far-fetched to me at first but after watching a few episodes, I was captivated. Charlie’s premise was that arbitrary activity is part of a larger, more complex design. By adding variables to an equation, the cases can be cracked by deciphering the underlying pattern of behavior. As I became more engrossed in Numb3ers, I started creating my own mathematical theorems to see if the random aspects on my life were actually random.

So I started slowly tracking some random items at work like tardiness and absenteeism and as I developed my equations, I was able to predict with a high degree of certainty when people would be absent, late, or sick. As I became better at my predictions, I began to realize that the math whiz on Numb3rs stated one fact that was true; random really wasn’t all that random. If I tracked things long enough or added in a related set of variables, sooner or later, real patterns started to develop.

Convinced that I had stumbled onto a mere coincidence with my first few equations, I started to track just about every aspect of my life. Nothing was off limits. The more variables I included in the equation, the more the patterns of my every day life started to develop into a very clear blueprint. It was odd to realize that what I once thought was happenstance was really just an intricate design playing out in the subconscious realm of my own reality.

I spent the better part of six months tracking everything around me and as I developed more integrated equations, my life became quite predictable. I had everything down to a science and I was beginning to think I had unraveled one of the great mysteries of life until one day, without any indication that it would happen, one of my mathematical theorems didn’t work anymore. The blueprint had been disrupted and I was very concerned about it because my sex life had hit a slump!

I examined every equation, I double-checked every one of the variables and no matter how many times I evaluated the information, the math did not lie! The outline that I had created had been radically altered but I wasn’t able to understand why my wife and I started to go longer stretches of time between making love.

I tried to manipulate the variables but the more I tried to fix our love life, I made the situation worse. Nothing worked. I even went so far as to create a new equation to compensate for our deviation from our normal pattern but the math came out with the same result every single time. And unfortunately for me, the dry spell was still intact.

Then, one night, after I had tried to engage my wife in a little evening affection that wasn’t reciprocated, I decided to confront her with the mathematical realities of our physical relationship. I had always been told that honesty was the best policy. So I broached the topic with my wife and we had an honest, heart to heart conversation about the scarcity of our passionate encounters. I bore my heart and soul to my wife about my concerns.

Which brings me to the first rule of number theory; NEVER, and I mean never, tell your wife exactly how many days it has been since your last night of intimacy. My wife went as white as a ghost because I knew exactly how many days had passed since our last physical encounter and then, just like that, she got angry.

In time, her anger went away. And when it did, my wife gave me a very honest answer in relation to our intimacy discussion. She hadn’t crunched the numbers or studied any mathematical theorems; she just decided to tell me exactly how she felt. So she sat down next to me on the couch and said, “I have been thinking about what we talked about and I think, well, maybe, I just don’t need it as much as you do.”

The words echoed throughout the caverns of my brain! What did she just say?! Did those words really leave my wife’s mouth?! I had thought that by approaching my wife honestly that our slump would have been corrected and all future slumps would have been averted, but it didn’t work out the way. I was never prepared for her declaration about “needing it less than I did” and I couldn’t believe that her statement was true.

Which brings me to rule number two of number theory; NEVER, and I mean never, be open and honest about your intimate relationship unless you know exactly how the conversation will turn out. Every good lawyer will tell you that you should never ask a question of a witness unless you are one hundred percent sure that you know what the answer is going to be. It is a text book rule of thumb and rule number two of the number theory is an absolute rule. There are no scenarios for engaging honestly in a conversation about your physical encounters unless you know exactly what the outcome of the discussion will be.

Unfortunately, I had opened Pandora’s Box and got an answer from my wife that I didn’t expect but her answer was vague. I never got a full explanation of what that answer meant in the grand scheme of things and now I was in a full panic about what this meant for the future. So it was time to defend the desire we had for each other physically and reverse the course of action I had created for myself. It was time to throw a Hail Mary pass and pray for a score in a big way.

I decided to bring our open ended question about the future of our private life to the foreground for one final show down. It was time to clarify our stances, draw the battle lines in the sand and watch as my wife backed off of her statement and returned to our regular after-hours activities. So after the kids went to bed, I sat down on the couch across the room from my wife and said, “You know, there are some things that I just don’t need to as much as you do as well.”

“What?” she said as she looked up at me with that icy glare that silently implied that I was in a ton of trouble if I had just said what she thought I had just said. And as soon as she looked at me, I should have backed down and retreated, but I didn’t. I had to stand my ground, defend our love life and make my point once and for all.

“There are some things I just don’t need as much as you do either.” I replied. There was no turning back now. I could tell by the way she repositioned herself in her chair that she couldn’t wait to hear what I had to say next.

“Like what?”

“Well, I just don’t need to spend as much time as you do with your family at the holidays,” I said as I threw down the gauntlet. “And I just don’t need to clean the house as much as you do. And I definitely don’t feel the urge to do the yard work as much as you do. And really, if we are being completely honest, I just don’t feel the need to do the dishes as much as you do either.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really”

“Oh, you don’t need to do those things as much as I do, is that what you really think?”

“That’s not what I think, that’s what I know!”

“Oh, we’ll see about that,” she said as she abruptly left the room. I could tell I had gotten to her. She was on the ropes and it was awesome. It was the single greatest moment since John “Bluto” Blutarsky’s “Germans bombed Pearl Harbor” speech in Animal House. I stood my ground, made my point and drew a line in the sand. It was only matter of time before she caved in and saw things from my point of view.

Which brings me to rule number three of number theory; NEVER, and I mean never, challenge your wife to a battle of wills when the weapon of choice is to withhold intimacy. Women can go for long periods of time without making love; extremely long periods of time. Challenging my wife when the weapon of choice was sex was a bad idea. It was like waging a land war in Asia and we all learned from Vizzini in The Princess Bride that you should never wage a land war in Asia. I had fallen victim to one of the classic blunders and I lost. I lost big!

Fortunately, in time, my wife forgave me. And as it turns out, our intimate miscues were just a slump. Like a baseball player who tries too hard to get a hit when he is in a batting slump, I had tried too hard when our love life had hit a bump in the road. The harder I tried, the more I struck out.

But, thankfully, we eventually returned to our regular routine. And when I went back and ran the numbers through my equations, it all made sense; life will have its ups and downs. When I accounted for work related stress, illness, children, housework, families, and worries about money as well as all of the other pressures of life, it was inevitable that at some point in our relationship we were going to hit an intimacy slump. It was there for me to see if I had just paid closer attention to the variables in the equation.

Which brings me to fourth and final rule of number theory; NEVER, and I mean never, practice applied theorems and mathematics without an advanced degree in math. Charlie’s character on the show had a team of writers who always made sure that he got out of every situation safely and without incident. I, on the other hand, have proven Alexander Pope’s statement that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

And it was very dangerous because in my desperation to solve our problem by using theories, I had created more problems for myself in reality. So, please, trust me on this one fact; skip rules one through three of the number theory and apply rule number four to your life each and every day, because math can be a very dangerous thing.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS