The other day I was watching a television commercial where this guy walks into his kitchen and tells a woman sitting at a table that there is a fancy-pants car parked in the driveway. The woman says something like, "That's your car, Frank."

The camera goes to the guy's face and he is wearing an idiotic grin. "Oh yeah," this big boob says, "so it is." The camera goes for a closeup of the woman's face and she is rolling her eyeballs toward the ceiling.

I came away with two conclusions from this 30-second commercial. The first is that the woman featured in this drama, judging from her reaction, was the man's wife. My second conclusion is that it was an unstated - but accepted - fact that the man was a complete idiot.

When I told the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston about the commercial and its unstated message that men are complete idiots, Mrs. Johnston said something that shocked me.

"That's because most men are complete idiots," Mrs. Johnston said.

I was shocked because normally Mrs. Johnston lets my observations about life pass without much comment other than a "If you say so" followed by throat-clearing noise.

The "If you say so" comment doesn't mean she agrees with me, but I take it to mean that Mrs. Johnston doesn't think I'm a complete idiot every time I notice something. In her sneaky, clever way, though, she was saying that as a male, I, too, am a complete idiot.

"Not all men," Mrs. Johnston added, as if to appear reasonable, "but most men are complete idiots."

After this exchange, I started watching the television commercials more closely for signs of men as idiots. I found that most of those men who fall into the complete-idiot category, according to the commercials, were married men. Sometimes single men were shown as complete idiots but only when they were eating pizzas or hamburgers or doing laundry.

Married guys, on the other hand, were always shown doing something so idiotic that it is amazing they ever found women who would marry them. If these guys aren't saying or doing something idiotic (like not knowing someone is knocking at the door with a new telephone or blowing up the house while trying to make dinner), they're eating something that gives them gas.

One commercial shows this guy grocery shopping with his wife. You can tell he doesn't like doing it until people start giving him free food samples. Of course, because the guy is a complete idiot, he eats too much and it gives him gas.

But as a married guy, he is too big of an idiot to do anything for himself. With a shake of her head (as if to say "What an idiot!"), his wife finds something to stop this attack and everything ends happily.

I know this isn't a real example of married life. If I woke up in the middle of the night suffering some gastrointestinal distress, Mrs. Johnston wouldn't be like the wife in that commercial.

She might wake up and take notice, but she wouldn't get me anything to reduce my distress. Instead she'd roll over and say what a real wife would say:

"Is that you or the dog?"

After swimming, waking his wife in the middle of the night is Steve Johnston's most common aerobic activity. He can be reached at stevejohnst@aol.com. Paul Schmid is a Times news artist.