The Bureau of Things That Actually Happened

There are couples who fight about money. Or in-laws. Or big existential questions like where to live, how to raise kids.

We have those too, of course. But, our most reliable, most repeatable conflict is smaller and weirder – a steady drip of micro-debates about reality itself. Not the nature of reality. Just… the facts on the ground.

Did that slogan exist?
Was that product ever real?
Is that memory legitimate or is it one of those brain-mirages that feels true because it’s wearing the right texture?

I tend to come into these arguments with full confidence and a perfectly reasonable vibe. Christa comes in like an undercover auditor from the Bureau of Things That Actually Happened.

And, maddeningly, she wins a lot.

Enjoy The Go, Unfortunately

Take the Charmin bears. I still can’t believe a company looked at the human condition and said, “Yes. The best way to sell toilet paper is to tell everyone to enjoy the go,” as if bathroom time is a curated experience you can pair with a nice candle and a little playlist called Lavender Relief. In my head, it’s too absurd to be real. Like a line someone wrote to make fun of marketing.

Christa, however, had that calm certainty. Not loud certainty. The more dangerous kind. The “I don’t need to argue because I remember this with my whole nervous system” kind. She remembered the bears. She remembered the tone. She remembered the world as it was. And, then reality, on cue, bent in her direction.

So, fine. She was right. “Enjoy the go” is real. The bears are real. My disbelief was not evidence. It was just… vibes.ay you tell your story online can make all the difference.

The Leather Block Delusion

Then came the leather blocks.

This is my favorite loss because it’s so specific. Somewhere in the museum of my childhood memory, there are children’s blocks made of leather. Not foam blocks. Not vinyl. Not wood. Leather. Soft but firm, like someone took mini ottomans and said, “Perfect. Let’s teach a toddler about physics with luxury upholstery.”

I could feel them. I could smell them. I could practically hear the subtle squeak of stacked leather against leather, as if the blocks themselves were saying, “We’re real. We’re real. Trust us.”

Christa had never heard of such a thing. And, she didn’t even mock me properly. She just gave me that look – the gentle head tilt of a person watching someone confidently describe a dream as historical fact. A few questions, a little silence, a soft “No, I don’t think that’s a thing.”

We asked around. Nothing. We searched. Nothing. We found no evidence of leather blocks beyond my stubborn conviction and the fact that my brain is fully capable of generating tactile hallucinations with excellent detail.

So now we have a pattern.

Christa is right about what exists in the world.
I am right about what could exist in the world, if it were slightly stranger and funded by an eccentric Scandinavian toy company.

Receipts Versus Prophecy

And, look – I’m not going to sit here and let the narrative become “Christa is always right.” That’s not fair to me, a man who is objectively intelligent, widely read, and in possession of an embarrassing amount of random information that occasionally makes people blink and ask, “Wait, how do you know that?”

I can be right too.

Just not always in the same category.

Because our marriage has multiple kinds of rightness. There’s the provable, checkable kind. The kind with receipts. Christa’s natural habitat.

And, then there’s my kind – the predictive, the intuitive, the “I know where this is headed” rightness. The rightness that doesn’t look like a fact until twenty minutes later when you come back from a nap and say, in a slightly humbled voice, “Okay. You were right.”

Nap Prophecies And Tiny Reboots

The nap thing is real. It happens constantly.

I’ll watch Christa move through the house like someone trying to finish three lives at once. She’ll be doing tasks with that specific tight energy that means she’s about four minutes from feeling personally betrayed by a sock. And, I’ll say it, gently, like I’m offering a glass of water to someone in the desert.

Take a nap.

Not forever. Not a dramatic “sleep until spring.” Just a clean, surgical twenty minutes. A tiny reboot. A small mercy. She’ll resist, because she’s Christa and she can carry a lot and she’s always doing something for someone. She’ll say she’s fine. She’ll say there’s too much to do. She’ll say she doesn’t want to waste the time.

And, then she’ll lie down. And, then she’ll come back later with softer eyes and a calmer voice and she’ll say the words that feel like a private medal being pinned to my chest.

Okay. You were right.

That counts. That counts so much.

The Graham Cracker Veto

Then there’s the baby name debate, which is its own sacred arena. We’re having a son soon, and the name conversation has the emotional intensity of choosing a spell you’re going to tattoo on a human being forever.

Christa suggested “Graham.”

I said no so fast I’m surprised the air didn’t crackle.

Not because it’s a bad name in some universal sense. It’s a perfectly respectable name. It has a polite, sturdy feel. You can imagine a Graham wearing a sweater. You can imagine him owning a decent bookshelf.

But, for us, for me, it triggered a hard veto.

I didn’t like it. That should be enough, honestly, because naming a child is not a committee vote on a city ordinance. It’s intimate. It’s personal. It’s a sound you’re going to say a thousand times with love and urgency and exhaustion.

But, I also had two other points, and I stand by them with unreasonable pride.

He can’t have the same first name as my aunt and uncle’s last name. That’s a weird echo. That’s a glitch in the family soundboard. It makes the name feel like it’s already wearing someone else’s jacket.

And, most importantly, his name cannot be a cracker.

Yes, graham crackers are delicious. Yes, they form the base of the holy trinity that becomes s’mores. But, I refuse to live in a world where I’m yelling, “Graham, come here!” and my brain has to briefly pass through the snack aisle before it reaches my child.

So, yes. That’s a version of right. It’s not “objective reality” right. It’s “I have boundaries” right. It’s “my son’s name shouldn’t be adjacent to Honey Maid” right.

Midnight Sudoku From The Mothership

And, while we’re talking about rightness, we have to address the fact that Christa appears to be an alien in one specific domain.

Sudoku.

This woman can do hard sudokus in what feels like two minutes. Sometimes at midnight. Sometimes with the casual energy of someone folding laundry. It’s offensive.

What makes it worse is that she allegedly doesn’t even know the jargon. She doesn’t talk about pointing pairs. She doesn’t talk about X-wings. She doesn’t narrate her strategy like a YouTube tutorial. She just… sees it.

Numbers appear in her mind the way a melody appears in someone else’s. Constraint satisfaction isn’t work for her, it’s a kind of silent dance. A grid is a landscape, and she’s just walking through it, casually pointing at truths.

Meanwhile, I’m over here like, “Well, I got Wordle in two.”

Which is true! I do! I get Wordle in two a lot. I’m good with language. I can feel words in my mouth before they exist. I can triangulate meaning. I can land on the right answer fast.

But, Wordle in two is a cute party trick. Christa’s sudoku speed is a supernatural event.

So now we’re left with this complicated, affectionate truth.

Christa is right about the world more often than I’d like to admit. She remembers slogans that should not exist. She can sniff out imaginary products with zero effort. She can slice through number grids like she’s reading subtitles.

But, I’m not exactly a bumbling fool wandering around believing in leather furniture for toddlers. I’m right too, in my own ways.

I’m right about when a nap will save the evening.
I’m right about the emotional weather that hasn’t arrived yet but is clearly on the radar.
I’m right about some lines you draw early, like “our child will not be named after a snack.”

Marriage isn’t one scoreboard. It’s a whole arcade. Different games. Different skills. Different kinds of winning.

Christa is an undefeated champion in “what exists.”
I’m a solid contender in “what matters.”

The Rough Draft In Her Head

And, then there’s another category where I keep scoring points, and it’s one Christa finds both useful and mildly unsettling.

I have this freakish ability to read her mind.

Not in a mystical, crystals-and-auras way. More like I’ve lived beside her long enough that her thoughts leave footprints. I’ll finish her sentences. I’ll answer the question she hasn’t asked yet. I’ll watch her hover in that specific mental doorway where she’s trying to remember what she was about to say, and I’ll just hand it to her.

“Oh, you were going to say the thing about—”

“Yes. That.”

It happens so often that it almost feels like cheating, like I’m getting access to the rough draft of her brain before she hits publish.

And, it’s not just words. Sometimes it’s dinner. She’ll do that small sigh that isn’t frustration, exactly, but the sigh of someone silently asking the universe to please decide what we’re eating. And, I’ll say, “You want tacos. Not because tacos are always the answer, but because you want something you don’t have to think about.”

And, she’ll look at me like I’m either a sorcerer or an idiot who got lucky.

But, it’s real. I can tell when she’s forgetting what she meant to add. I can tell when she’s about to text someone and will talk herself out of it. I can tell when she’s trying to be polite while her brain is screaming, I am done with this conversation.

Tangent Control For The In-Law Cinematic Universe

Which brings me to my other specialty – conversational shepherding.

Christa’s in-laws can get going. You know what I mean. A story begins as a normal story and then sprouts branches. Then those branches sprout side quests. Then suddenly we’re twenty minutes deep into a conversation about a cousin’s neighbor’s coworker’s dog’s allergy journey, and no one remembers how we got here, including the person telling it.

That’s when I quietly step in – not as a hero, not as a dictator, just as the guy with a gentle hand on the steering wheel.

I’ll bring it back. I’ll tie it off. I’ll summarize the actual point everyone was orbiting. I’ll toss in one clean sentence that returns us to Earth.

“Oh right, so the main thing is—”

And, the room will either snap back into focus or, at the very least, understand that a landing is available.

It’s not that Christa can’t do this. She can. She’s just too gracious sometimes. She’ll let the conversation wander out of kindness. I, however, have this instinct to protect the group from narrative sprawl. I can’t help it. I love a good tangent in writing. In real life, when it’s midnight and everyone’s tired, I start craving closure like it’s oxygen.

So, yes, Christa wins the “what exists” battles.

But, I win some too.

I win in the quiet moments where she doesn’t have to finish her thought alone.
I win when the night is saved by a nap I called ten minutes early.
I win when a family conversation starts drifting into the wilderness and I gently guide it back to the trail.

Different games. Same marriage. Same scoreboard that keeps changing depending on what room we’re in.

And, sometimes, if I’m lucky, I get to watch her solve a sudoku at midnight like a visiting intelligence from another star system, and I can just think

What the hell, girl. How.