WRITTEN BY STEVE JOHNSTON ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL SCHMID

A RECENT SURVEY found that 100 percent of men want to sell their homes, buy an RV the size of a Greyhound bus and travel around the United States taking in the sights.

Another survey found that the women married to the men in the survey didn't want to sell their homes, buy an RV the size of a Greyhound bus and travel around the U.S. These women said they would get on board for a week or two to see the sights, but that's as far as they'd go.

Apparently, the women taking the survey thought it would be nice if their children still had a house to call home and drop by to visit. The men, on the other hand, said if they had an RV the size of a bus the kids could visit Mom and Dad on the road.

"If they could find us," one father added.

This scientific poll was taken in my living room and kitchen. It involved five married couples with children in high school and college. It also involved drinking beer by the men and white wine by the women.

Actually, the first poll involved only the husbands because the wives were in the kitchen, making some kind of meal that people don't actually eat unless company was coming for dinner and the company volunteered to be the subjects of a cruel experiment. You can usually find these recipes in books called "Things Even The French Won't Eat."

All of the couples had been married for more than 20 years, and unless one member of the duo went insane, it looked like we were all going to be together for the rest of our miserable lives. Naturally, the discussion gets around to the subject of what to do when all the kids are gone, and you find yourself looking at the person you married back in the 1970s when you both had hair.

Then you start to wonder about your future together.

The big family home is becoming empty, and you realize that you're not going to get promoted to president of the firm because the job went to a guy the same age as your oldest child. It seems, these husbands said, you are down to one of two choices:

You could either kill each other or buy an RV the size of a Greyhound bus and take off across America.

When the kids wondered where Mom and Dad were, the dads said we could send them a postcard that said, "We're someplace where the sun is shining. Be back by the year 2050!"

All the husbands agreed that there is a lot of this country to be seen and we haven't seen enough of it. Some of the guys told about passing an RV on I-5 with a Jeep being towed behind and hearing "Born To Be Wild" wailing out an open window.

Sitting behind the wheel is a guy about our age. He no longer looks like our father but like a baby boomer who decided it was time to get lost in America.

The guys all sighed at the thought.

The narrow-minded wives kept coming back to home and the need to have roots, not rubber treads, planted in the ground. They couldn't embrace the adventure of calling a campsite their home. They have such a narrow view of life.

Later that evening I was talking with the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston about the RV dream. It seemed perfectly logical to me. But not to Mrs. Johnston.

"Given the choices," she said, "I would take the first option."

"What first option was that?" I asked ever so carefully.

"You said we could either kill each other or buy an RV the size of a bus and travel across the country," Mrs. Johnston said, adding, just in case I missed it, "I like the first option."