The Time I Outsmarted My Wife Part One

 

I will totally brag about myself in this piece, so if you don’t like it… keep reading because there will be lots of humility in this too. Probably, I’m not sure, I haven’t written it yet. This is only the third or fourth sentence depending on how you read the first and/or second sentence(s).

If the mess of a paragraph above is any indication, you can probably guess that I don’t outsmart my wife Wendy very often. While I get confused easily and lose track of my thoughts, my wife seems to become more and more focused. She is fast, cunning, well spoken, extremely well educated and is a master of verbal Aikido. Few people get the drop on my wife. This sometimes makes me appear to be a dullard paired with a smart, funny, interesting and dare I say, beautiful woman.

People wonder openly why we are together, specifically why she is with me, not why I am with her. Everyone knows why I am with her. When I say people openly wonder, I mean they ask us directly why we are together. They make it sound like they are joking, but every once in a while we get someone who is unfamiliar with us enough or inebriated enough to press the question with genuine confusion. Although my wife still politely assures me that the offending person was just joking, I can tell otherwise. Wendy will then give several reasons why she is with me: “He’s great at opening doors for me.” “Steve is a very good whistler.” or “He bought me at a charity auction.” These reasons never seem like enough to the people who are so untactful as to ask this question. These questions make us laugh.

The fact that people are baffled by why we are together does not bother me nearly as much as one would think. Why? Because it makes me look like I have some talent or quality that is unknown to everyone else, OR that my wife suffered severe trauma to the head and that puzzles people. The thing is, I do have a talent that they underestimate. I’m a very, VERY good salesman. If I can sell this (I’m pointing to my whole, messy, chubby, unfashionable body) to her, I can sell anything.

A more polite person usually asks how Wendy and I met. This story is one I’m happy to tell and I’ve told it to many people through the years. I plan to tell it here. All the cold, manipulative details will unfold. So if you think you know it, you can stop reading now or you can listen to the new ending that you probably haven’t heard yet. Just don’t spoil it for other readers.

(Reading this blog also counts as a Sales and Selling Master’s class requirement for 5 credits with the University of Phoenix. Email your analysis essay to the classroom inbox, OR as per usual, choose the option to try to “sell me” on why you shouldn’t have to do the assignment.)

It was late October of my second junior year in college. I was majoring in public relations because there was no math requirement (relax, I took logic and it’s practically the same thing) to graduate. It was chilly and I could frequently be seen walking to class in my puffy coat and aggressively orange stocking cap. In one particular class, I typically stayed to the back of the room by the door so I could be the first out. The professor was unbearably boring and I thought that was incredibly inappropriate for a communications class.

It was a Thursday. I know this only because that was the day the student newspaper came out. I know THAT because I had my head buried in it, trying to put any words in my head other than what was being presented to us by the professor. It was to be my favorite Thursday of all time.

Wait, can I change the title of this to, “My Favorite Thursday”? No? Fine.

Well, as self-absorbed as I had ever been, with my head in the paper at the back corner of the classroom, something extraordinary happened. I heard a voice in my head that wasn’t the professor’s or any of mine. It was pleasant. It was hypnotic. The voice was compelling, sweet and smooth. It was as if someone had poured room temperature butterscotch pudding into my ear, without staining my clothes or throwing off my equilibrium. At that exact moment, the voice could have told me to stab myself to death with a soup spoon and I would have done it. I wanted more and I lowered the paper to see how I could obtain it.

Glassy eyed, I looked over the poorly drawn, heavy handed student editorial cartoon to see a young woman standing at the front of the class saying Lord-knows-what to Professor Ambien. She was dressed in warm business attire and had tightly curled brown hair that reached the shoulder blades of her blazer. If she wasn’t standing in class, I would have thought she was there on official business for the IRS… The incredibly attractive IRS. She was like a Charlie’s Angel meets high powered accountant. Her voice matched her figure and her figure was as sharp as the words coming out of her mouth. I flipped the listening switch in my brain from “STANDBY” to “POWER” and caught the tail end of what she was saying. She was much smarter than the professor, and I just wanted to hear more smart things spoken with her voice. What was SHE doing in a communications class?

For anybody else, just knowing a person like this exists would be enough to inspire a person to a better life. It wasn’t enough for me. I wouldn’t say I became obsessed with her, but I knew that in time we would be married. It might take weeks or years, but she would fall in love with the image of Steve Damm that I cultivated specifically for her. It was time to play the long game.

Somehow I always ended up at the door to the classroom when leaving class at the exact same time, despite me sitting next to the door and she sitting in the exact opposite position in the class. Phase one: get noticed in a subtle way was complete.

My big break was when she stood at the front of the class and explained that she would be gathering data for her psychology project on adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It was a test of sorts that showed indicators of internal restlessness in adults. It was a test I intended to pass, by failing it miserably. And I did.

When she came around to collect them, I held onto mine a little closer so that I might engage this woman. I stood up and handed it to her while using my best shot at introducing myself. “You know, I happen to be an adult with ADHD.”

She lit up, “OH! We need you! Are you diagnosed?”

“Oh yeah,” I said with a sly smile.

“Are you currently taking medication to help control it?”

“You bet I am. Pills. Orange ones,” I said with extreme confidence as I maintained eye contact.

“Oh my gosh, I need your name and number,” she said as she dug into her adorable leather satchel looking for paper and pen.

“Allow me,” I said as I presented her with a homemade business card which read: Steve Damm, Misunderstood Genius, above my address and phone number.

“Yep, you’re an adult with ADHD alright,” she said after glancing down at my card, “we will definitely be in touch.”

“Steve Damm,” I said as I held out my hand for her to shake, giving the social cue that I needed her name as well and letting her know I could be professional. I did not look at her chest for the entire interaction. (I’m not a pig. Yes I am. I’m a trained, indoor pig that would be allowed on the furniture. The point is, I know how disrespectful it is to have instinct take over and allow for a condition I call “simultaneous lazy eye”).

“Wendy,” she said as she took my hand. I resisted the impulse to wiggle my middle finger against her palm. Thank you orange pills!

Although I was called for several frustrating experiments over the next few quarters in the psychology department by her peers, I spent no time with Wendy. I showed up on time, I did the experiments and did everything asked of me, no matter how little dignity they may have required. Researchers talk and I needed to keep a clean and agreeable profile in case I was asked or spoken about.

Meanwhile I collected every bit of data I could about Wendy. No detail was too small, and I began building a mental file on her that I could use in my long game. The intelligence I gathered was positive. She was nice but had a backbone, was passionate about education and her work with the sign language communicating chimpanzees, and she had a boyfriend who was a pilot and visited with his airplane. I could work with all of this. I can feign intelligence and believed in education, I liked chimps and in the “cool boyfriend” category I believe drummer trumps pilot. It only required opportunity, time and to listen to what she might be missing so that I could fill that need.

Now, you might be thinking, “Steve might be evil and this is bordering on stalker behavior”. You might think that I’m operating in a creepy manner that borders on the deceitful. You might say, “Wow, Steve this is a little scary and you should have been more transparent with Wendy”.

Well, shut up. You don’t know me and you don’t know my life. Look at me and what I have to offer as a human and tell me that I could win this woman in a traditional way. I’m a realist. I own several mirrors and I know how to operate them. I have already established that I am routinely questioned about how I pulled this off, proving that I am in fact out of Wendy’s league. Her league being The American League of Major League Baseball and mine an afternoon pickup game where a group of Belgian exchange students are taught to throw, catch and hit a peach sized ball covered in horsehide.

Phase two of operation “Outthink the Shrink” would prove to be long, tricky and tedious. It would involve long stretches of no communication between Wendy and I, more data gathering and quick hits of charm and wit. It was risky and bold. There was clandestine operations and calculated timing of interactions. I had coaching. I had inside people. So try and look at this situation less as a creepy stalker story and more like a long heist film. Specifically a heist film that had a slickness of Ocean’s Eleven with the bumbling execution of The Pink Panther.

More will be revealed in Part Two.

In the next segment, my desire for Wendy grows, Wendy’s awareness of me spikes and I set the trap.