I have this theory that one of the best ways to build mutual admiration for the day-to-day slog within a marriage is to enact a Take Your Spouse to Work Day.
For my own husband, I have always feared that this might be a boring prospect indeed. Who wants to sit at home looking over his wife’s shoulder as she hammers on her keyboard and bangs her head against the wall until it bleeds?
There really is no glamor to the writing life.
But now that I’m heading down to Eugene twice a week to teach magazine writing at the UO, I’ve got much more to offer: a nice drive through the Willamette Valley, a 1.5 hour class, and an afternoon of exploring Eugene.
Adam had a random day off of work recently, so I dragged him along.
Rule #1: Follow through. I felt such guilt at making my husband sit through my own class — all we were doing was watching student presentations on magazine markets — that I gave him a bye and let him sit outside reading A Canticle for Leibowitz. Massive fail on my part, since I might have been able to impress him with my ability to wrangle a classroom discussion and mold young minds.
Rule #2: Create conflict. Every single person we encountered in the journalism department seemed there to help me the day I took my husband to work. They were like these bright, shiny, smiling diamond people dropped from heaven. Come to think of it, they usually are…
Rule #3: Make it a normal day. If your goal is to show your spouse how difficult your job is, by all means do not set up a day of fun in Eugene for TYHTWD. We spent the afternoon poking around the new special exhibition Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Art of the Superhero, currently on view at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. For nerdy comic book collectors and fan boys, it might be a disappointment — it’s more of an intro to the art of the comic than an exploration of the form — but it does feature a few prize pieces, including the first-ever serialized American comic book and Superman No. 1. One section of the exhibition is given over to a few very telling and very famous panels of the Batman strip, in which the Dark Knight, in a confrontation with the Joker, realizes how similar they actually are.
Take Your Husband to Work DayVerdict: I got pwned. Or, I pwned myself. We had too much fun to make it seem like work. If he were a little 8-year-old rug rat, and I was trying to instill the values of playful work in his young mind so that he would gain some insight into mom’s life while also internalizing that Protestant work ethic, I might have given myself a gold star.
As it is, I’m pretty sure my husband thinks I just goof off all day at the computer and do stand-up for undergrads. And that I’m no Wonder Woman…
This is a great idea—question is, are you going to spend at day at HIS work?
Hope you are enjoying this beautiful fall day!
I’ve watched him in action before, though not for a whole day. He’s amazing at what he does.
The courtyard at the museum is one of my favorite places on earth. They used to have giant koi in the pond. This day does make “work” sound pretty dreamy!