If I were a brain surgeon, I'm sure Mrs. Johnston would come into the operating room and tell me what the kids had planned for the coming week, who called during the day, what we were having for dinner and what I needed to pick up at the grocery store after operating on this brain.

Fortunately for many people, I am not a brain surgeon. But I think you get the idea. My job is lower on the food chain. I write for my miserable living. But sometimes Mrs. Johnston will come behind me while I'm writing and start talking.

From what I gather in secret talks with my male friends, Mrs. Johnston is not unusual in her approach to making conversation with her husband. For example, if she wants me to do something, like go to the store for a loaf of bread, she won't say: "Go to the store when you're done writing that stuff and pick up a loaf of bread." That would be a direct sentence with an action involved. Mrs. Johnston would also see it as a demand on her part, and she wouldn't want to hear such a sentence ever coming out of her husband's mouth directly at her.

For one thing, her husband has been trained that if he wants a loaf of bread, he can go to the store himself and get it. Or he could write it on the grocery list hanging on the fridge. Besides, Mrs. Johnston wouldn't come right out and say she needed a loaf of bread. Instead, she would sneak up behind me and loom over my right shoulder until a shudder ran down my spine like it does when you see the shower scene in the movie "Psycho." When I acknowledge her presence by jumping out of my chair, Mrs. Johnston starts with an innocent question.

"Writing something?" she will ask after I stop shaking.

Single guys, pay attention here. You may think that you would like to come back with some smart-aleck remark if you were asked this question while typing on your computer. But married guys know better. That's why we are married and not single and eating fried baloney sandwiches.

"Just a little funny column," I tell her sweetly. That's all I ever do when I'm on the computer. But once again, single guys, you will note that I don't shoot my big, fat mouth off and say something stupid like, "No, I'm playing the piano."

Instead, I stop typing and let the most brilliant sentence I've ever thought of fly away. And I listen for my marching orders.

Sometimes Mrs. Johnston will tell me some amusing story about the children (although now that they have become teenagers, the stories about the kids aren't so much amusing as they are frightening). Other times she'll talk about something that happened during the day.

She'll ask me a question about what I'm doing, but I can tell by her eyeballs rolling to the back of her head and the drool running down her chin that my answer is far too long and doesn't interest her.

Finally, she will ask what she really wanted to ask all along: "Are you going to the store before dinner?"

Even before I have a chance to answer, she will pull a quick two-step on me with a deep dip. "No, if you weren't planning on going, I'll go. (Long sigh.) I was making dinner, and I think we need a loaf of French bread." (Longer sigh.)

OK, single guys, if you were asked this question, you might nod towards your work on the computer screen or the baseball game on the tube. This is an unspoken response that you are far too busy doing something that prevents you from going to the store.

But again, that's why you're a single guy. Acting like that as a married guy would give you the life expectancy of a mayfly.

Married guys may be miserable but they are happily miserable, and they live longer being married and miserable.

I know my life is happily miserable, and Mrs. Johnston said she is planning to continue making it miserable for as long as possible. She just told me that . . .

Oops. I don't have time to finish this column. Got to go to the store.