Louis Roney: Dissertation on marriage

A few years back, this commentator dared to enrich his readers with his uncommon knowledge of the marital state. It is not necessary for the writer to have been married but only that he may have heard a few locker-room moans and groans from his pals. My previous epistle on marriage was far inadequate to accommodate my enormous collection of anecdotes, so I choose to return to my warehouse for more goodies. If I had married every woman who wanted me along the way, I would be behind bars as a celebrated bigamist — but thank goodness most of the gals wouldn’t give me a second look. And so I moved on to my present state of being “happily married.”

Believe it or not, I know absolutely everything there is to know about marriage! And I can teach anybody the things I know in a trice.

Knowledge of marriage requires mostly listening, very little thought, and doing what one is told.

Illustration of this process simply requires that a man bring something or other to his wife who is sitting comfortably in an overstuffed chair.

The man must often repeat this process when the wife decides to change her mind and asks for a different item after thinking things over. You see? Simple!

Caution: The husband must ostensibly remain a hero in the eyes of his wife even though she knows full well he’s scared to death of her.

Marriage changes a man’s concepts regarding time. When he is told by his wife to do something in a given time, he had better do it in half the time designated. When she says she will do something in a store in a half hour, he had better allow a full hour because, at the meat counter she will surely run into Mrs. Shotzenheimer who will have a compulsion to tell your wife an interesting experience that her nephew had with a show girl in New York.

Most women see a man as a convenient vehicle for carrying things from the trunks of automobiles.

Men are also good at handling altercations with neighbors — this process allows the wife to be far removed from all shouting frays, and remain to the neighbors, an angelic figure.

Infrequently wives opt to cook when cooking is almost a vestigial art, and processed food contains literally everything from soup to nuts. Perhaps cooking a meal reminds a woman pridefully of her grandmother, and gives her the feeling that she is not outdone by her pioneer forebears. Lucky is the man who gets a home-cooked meal — that is, if she really knows how to cook...

My unsurpassed experience in marriage comes from my having done zillions of things I was told to do by b.w. She finds great virtue in my frantic running all over the place in her behalf.

A king-sized bed is valuable in a marriage when a man needs an avenue of escape from colorful hyperbolic conversational exchanges.

If a man has occasion to write and publish things he intends to be funny, he will seldom find a receptive audience in his wife. Husbands may be funny to every other woman in town, but seldom to their own wives. Wives relish dispensing judgment, and this ability the wife deems, is attenuated by undue smiling. A husband can tell other guys’ wives a joke that was old in World War II, and arouse uproars of laughter, whereas the same joke told to his wife produces only stony silence or a moan.

Clearly, people still like to get married. Marriage is reputedly cheaper than being single, although I have never heard that opinion from the mouth of a married man.

Marriages are often “blessed” with children — sometimes even more than nine months after the wedding! Children help a marriage, I believe, because they provide varieties of entertaining mayhem that neither mate can invent alone.

A woman who grows old without marrying is called “an old maid.” A man who grows old without marrying can be called many things depending on who is within earshot.

Men terrified of their wives often cut short their communica...