Wives - Doing the Math...

I am clearly not the voice of reason when it comes to marriage. My first two trips down the aisle ended in divorce, my third has lasted the longest, but the reason for the longevity of this relationship may be due in part to the fact that the spouse has been in a different country for all but a few weeks of the marriage, which is perfect, really. I can eat when I want to, watch sports on TV and leave the seat up if I am so inclined. I can travel there for occasional maintenence and hightail it back to the comfort of the man-cave when the conversation wanes. On the downside, I have to do my own cooking and laundry - seems a fair trade.

That said, I saw an article about the fact that there are so few women in certain parts of India that men have to sometimes share their wives with their brothers... Or whomever. In my opinion, it seems like bad planning when you eliminate pregnancies when they are found to be of female gender. That's easy math - a couple of generations of that sort of backward thinking and you find yourself taking deli-numbers for a few minutes of procreational hoo-ha with the three lucky gals on the block. Clearly not thinking ahead, the Indians.

Compare this to the glut of women in the camp of Warren Jeffs, the old-school Mormon fellow who took it upon himself to form his own town where the wives were plentiful enough that each man could have his share and more. This sounds like a better scenario than not having enough women, if you want my two cents. You can sleep with a different gal every night, your house would damned clean if you had six or seven wives helping with the upkeep and dinner would probably be a smorgasboard of delight. On the other hand, you would have to listen to a constant cacophony of yammering and in-house cat-fighting and those gals probably don't like the sexy underthings. Or the religion probably doesn't. I don't know for certain, but I'm guessing someone is putting the kibosh on the lacy undergarments. That's how it works - we'll have a few wives, but we'll dress them like Laura Ingalls so no one realizes we're being gluttons...

There has to be some sort of happy medium here - granted, having one wife can get tiresome, even if she's living in another country - but having to share one with family just doesn't feel right to me. What if someone in your little ring around the rosy passes along a dose of clap or some crabs - I'm thinking that makes for a tough Thanksgiving dinner, with everyone glaring at each othor over the cranberry sauce. If I open a Christmas gift from my brother and find a tube of cream for pubic-lice, there is going to be a fracas. A big fracas.

Having multiple wives, on the other hands, seems like overkill to me. If you think one woman talking during the basketball game is a pain in the ass, try having six of them pulling at your pantleg - literally and figuratively - every minute of the day. On the plus side, I'd probably be filthy rich, because I would never come home from work until at least half the spouses were sound asleep. The other three would, of course, be busy keeping my dinner warm...

I do have a solution for this gross mismanagement of the marital blueprint. I think either the Mormon folks should go live in these Indian villages or the Indians should come and settle down with the Mormons. Some kind of system could be worked out wherein the wives are distributed in an equitable fashion - perhaps it could be like a fantasy football draft or something - and a firm guideline for future dissemanation of the females should be put into place immediately. We are definitely not letting the Indians run this one - the last time they tried to manage the female offspring was obviously a royal disaster.

I welcome your thoughts - in the meantime, I will continue to stay on the straight and narrow, mining the single-wife situation the best I can. It seems really easy - especially with her being in another country and all. Try it. Or move to India or Utah - whichever suits your needs.