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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 she would like 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 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 showgirl.

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

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

These days, wives often opt to cook when cooking is deemed a vestigial art, and processed food contains everything from soup to nuts, literally. Cooking a meal reminds a woman pridefully of her grandmother and gives her the feeling that she is not outdone by her pioneer forebears.

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 activity on her behalf.

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

If a man has occasion to write and publish things he means 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 more than nine months after the wedding. Children help a marriage, I believe, because they provide varieties of 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 …