“You’re an asshole,” my wife, Jenni, said to me walking into our townhouse in Maple Grove, MN, upon returning home from work. 

A smirk was fighting through her incensed facial expression, letting me know she meant it lovingly.

If a happy marriage means not regularly calling your spouse vulgar names out of love, I don’t want it. 

“What did I do?” I asked.

I suppose I could have made some guesses, but that only would have reminded her of the dozens of other reasons I am an actual asshole rather than a loveable asshole.

“N, I, T,” she said.

“What about it?”

“Not in tournament, tournament,” she said, impersonating me.

After a moment, a smile slowly began to form on my face as a distant memory jumped to the front of my brain.

About a decade earlier, when we were teenagers, Jenni asked, “What’s the NIT?”

“It’s another end-of-season basketball tournament. It’s like a consolation tournament.”

“What does NIT stand for?”

Without hesitation, I said, “The tournament has been around for a long time. At first, the tournament board tried to compete with the March Madness tournament we know today. Still, good teams would choose the other tournament invite for whatever reason. So they’ve always gotten teams not invited to the big tournament. I can’t remember what it was initially named, but people used that tournament to make fun of rival schools by saying they were playing in the “Not In Tournament” tournament. People quickly abbreviated it to NIT, and the tournament board decided to lean into it.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Isn’t it? I’m surprised you’d never heard that before.”

I laughed to myself at the time. We moved on from the topic and never talked about it again. 

“I had a lunch meeting at work today. I was the only girl at the table, and everyone was talking about basketball. The NIT came up, and someone asked what NIT stood for,” Jenni said, face flushing as she recalled the embarrassment. “I was so excited to contribute to the conversation and told the whole story about how it stands for ‘Not In Tournament.'”

“No, you didn’t,” I said, laughing.

“I did. I thought I was sooo smart until someone else at the table told me it wasn’t true.”

Doing this is a habit of mine. I will provide reasonable-sounding answers to questions based on my pre-existing knowledge and an educated guess. I am surprised by my own answers from time to time. 

I don’t do it with malicious intent. There are two reasons I will do this.

One: If I’m talking to someone I care for, I will do it as a private joke for myself. If that person catches it, we both laugh. If they don’t catch it, I laugh. I laugh again if they embarrass themselves by re-telling my fabricated fact and then tell me it happened. 

Two: If I’m talking to strangers or acquaintances, I will do it to prevent an awkward silence in the conversation. If there is one thing I hate more than hearing about other people’s dreams, it’s an awkward silence during a conversation with someone I don’t know. 

This may be a learned behavior. 

When playing golf with my brother, PJ, recently, he tried it on me. 

“Killer whales won’t eat humans,” PJ said.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yep. Don’t like the taste of ’em,” PJ said. 

“You are so full of shit,” I said, laughing.

He could’ve had me with a little more explanation.

If the roles were reversed, I would have gone into a detailed explanation of why they don’t eat humans.

Something like: Marine biologists have varying theories as to why instances of killer whales eating humans are so rare. The most common explanation is that the humans they encounter wear SCUBA suits since killer whales are primarily found in colder ocean water. They may be intelligent enough to know the suits are not digestible. Still, it may be as simple as not liking the clothing texture. 

I’ve learned that the more detail you provide and the more technical jargon you use, the better your chance of avoiding follow-up questions. 

Some may have moral qualms about doing this. Granted, it is inherently deceptive, but is it better from a social standpoint to say, “I don’t know,” and reach for your phone to Google the answer?

It’s not as though the information on the internet is much more reliable. I am not attempting to sway people’s political opinions, take money from them, or provide medical advice that could endanger their lives. 

Often, I will read headlines or hear facts on TikTok that are too good for me to research further. I don’t pass these things off as facts. Rather, I provide a disclaimer either at the beginning or end of the anecdote: “I don’t know if it’s true, but I saw/read it and am choosing to believe it is.”

If the idea of doing this has piqued your interest, and you have children, you have a perfect place to practice. 

I don’t look at it as lying. It’s an excellent way to slow the flow of questions being hurled from the car’s back seat in rapid succession. 

Questions like: Daddy, how many cars are there in the world? 

Daddy, what if the road was made of water? 

Daddy, why are there traffic lights? 

Daddy, was everything black and white in the world when you were a kid? You know, in the olden days?

“The olden days,” the nerve… as if I needed a reason to fill them with misinformation. 

There is one story I am determined to make both of my kids believe and repeat. 

There is a power plant in Becker, MN. We drive by frequently on our trips up to Brainerd, MN. When the temperatures get frigid in the winter, the stacks’ steam makes it look like a cloud factory rather than a power plant. 

And that is precisely what I tell my children it is: a cloud factory. 

On cold, clear days when no steam comes from the stacks, I’ll say, “Oh, no wonder it’s so sunny; the cloud factory has the day off.”

I hope a day will come for my children when someone says, “There isn’t a cloud in the sky today.”

And they’ll respond, without hesitation or irony, “The cloud factory in Becker must have the day off.”

Maybe that day will be the first day my children will come through the front door and call me an asshole. 

A Dad can dream…

As the years have passed, Jenni has gotten brazen in her attempts to fact-check me when she believes I am up to my old tricks. 

“You’re just making that up,” she says. 

“Look it up,” I’ll say. 

What happens next has turned into a good way for me to gauge her mood towards me on a given day. 

I know she is really in love with me when she responds, “You know a lot of things.”

Conversely, when she’s irritated with me, she quickly picks up her phone to search for the answer, or if we’re at home, she’ll shout, “Alexa!”

It works out in my favor almost every time. When Jenni decides to be a fact-checker, I am often surprised to find out my answer is either correct or at least accurate enough that it is brushed away because I missed the mark on minor details. 

What keeps me at it and what makes it worth the mental energy are the times my answers go unchecked. Those answers are usually those I am confident would expose me as a liar. 

It makes me feel like Timmy Appleseed scattering jokes down the path of life, which will grow into future laughs. Never knowing when one will sprout and force my wife to start a conversation with, “You’re an asshole,” in a loving way rather than filled with contempt like how all of our other conversations start.

Cheers.