A LIKELY STORY: CALM, COOL AND COLLECTED ME...ON TAX DAY

It's no coincidence that the first year I've ever had my taxes done on time coincides with the first year of my marriage.

Look at me, everyone, it's April 15 -- Tax Day -- and I'm calm, cool and collected, not a bead of sweat on my face, not a harried hair on my head.

My taxes are finished, completed, long-since mailed off and the small refund collected and deposited into our meager checking account.

While looking at the bottom line of a W-2 is always a bit depressing, I must admit I feel pretty good about having my taxes done on time for the first time since I took my first job as a curb hop at A&W Root Beer way back in 1988.

But before I break my arm patting myself on the back, I must admit that I am in no way, shape or form responsible for this admirable feat.

It's no coincidence that the first year I've ever had my taxes done on time also coincides with the first year of my marriage. Like most other things, Lori took care of our taxes and had them done long ago.

Lori is my organizational opposite. With money, she's as thrifty as I am wasteful. Her hobbies include balancing the checkbook, figuring up a budget, paying the bills and cleaning the house.

They must be her hobbies because that's all she ever does. If she enjoys those things so much, who am I to try and interfere?

And she's no different when it comes to taxes. She actually saved receipts, W-2s, W-4s and everything else tax-related.

Meanwhile, I sat on the couch and watched television.

Then, when she got all of the paperwork together, she sat down and quickly filled out the forms and then dropped it in the mail. It's really much easier the way she does it.

While I, umm..., kept sitting on the couch watching TV. (Hey, give me some credit, it was a 24-hour Stooges marathon.)

That's one of the reasons I love Lori. While she may get disgusted at my slothfulness, she's stopped riding me about it. Instead, she contents herself to stick pins in a Scott Moyers voodoo doll.

Which I don't mind, as long as its quiet.

But she should do the taxes. And I think she does them partly so that I cannot. Because she knows how I did do them when I did do them.

My tax adventures always go the same way. It begins with an annual three-day hunt for my W-2s. This usually entailed digging through every drawer in the house until I came to the last one, the bottom drawer in a basement cabinet. There beneath the old Spiderman comic books, my car title and a half eaten piece of licorice would sit the dusty W-2s.

Then I struggled for days with those God-forsaken 1040 tax forms. After finding the W-2, usually by about April 12, I would get a calculator, sit down and spend about the next 68 hours straight trying to make heads or tails of deductions, exemptions and assessments. All with about four receipts.

And then, exhausted and defeated, I would take it to a tax expert to do it for me.

After a fee that usually gobbled up any refund I might have coming back, I would put taxes out of my mind until the following April.

But no more. Those days are behind me now that I'm married.

They say that the only things certain in life are death and taxes, but I don't mind. My savior will call me home after I'm dead, and my wife handles the rest.

Scott Moyers is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.