STRANGER THAN FICTION: SCIENCE HAS NO CURE FOR MALE PATTERN INCOMPETENCE

It happened again.

The Other Half demonstrated that he is a victim of Male Pattern Incompetence.

MPI is caused by a combination of testoterone and professional sports. Its primary symptom is the inability to complete a simple task correctly. Thus, the person who assigned the task, also known as the "wife," never asks the MPI victim to do that task again.

Oh, some of us dumber wives will make the same request a couple of times, but we eventually learn. There's no known cure for MPI.

Take the first time I asked Mr. Half to finish up the laundry while I grocery shopped. His assignment: Remove the clothes from the washers in our apartment complex laundry room, put them in the dryers and bring a few of my delicates back to the apartment to air dry.

When I returned home, every surface in our apartment was covered with wet clothing. Our two canvas laundry bags were soaked and dirty on the bottom. A few dry clothes were in an old plastic hamper that we now use to store pet supplies.

Mr. Half's explanation was nonsensical and incomplete, but here's what I finally got out of him. I'll break it down, step by step, so females can understand it:

1. He forgot which items were supposed to come back to the apartment and which ones were supposed to go in the dryer, so he brought back every item that he felt might POSSIBLY be air dried.

2. The dryers were in use, so he couldn't immediately put the wet clothes into them. However, he thought it would be rude to leave our clothes sitting in the washers. (Note: In laundry room etiquette, it is OK to leave wet clothes in washers if all the dryers are in use. Just keep checking back.) Mr. Half loaded up our wet clothes into two white canvas bags we use to haul laundry.

3. The bags were too heavy to carry with all those wet clothes, so he dragged them on the floor of the laundry room and hallway, then back to the laundry room when the dryers opened.

4. He realized it would be silly to put dry clothes into wet canvas bags, so he emptied the plastic hamper remember, it was holding various pet supplies and put the clean, dry clothes into it.

I was absolutely beside myself when I returned from the office and saw the results. I ranted and raved and nagged trying to get a decent explanation for the logic behind what he'd done, but Mr. Half just looked at me with that irritating what-the-hell-is-your-problem smirk.

You ladies KNOW that smirk.

I happen to believe that men can control their MPI. I think MPI is sometimes a conscious effort to keep from being assigned housework.

So, like a big, optimistic dummy, I gave The Other Half another laundry-related assignment on Sunday. After all, he managed to keep himself in clean, unwrinkled clothing before we married, why couldn't he now? I woke up early. While he slept, I gathered four loads of laundry, washed them and put them into dryers. I fixed him a big, hot breakfast for Mr. Half and handed him the morning paper. When he finished eating, I asked that he merely remove our clothes from the dryers while I went for a morning swim.

"You've seen me do that, right?" I asked. "You know how I like them done?" He grunted at me from behind the sports section.

I returned from my swim to find every article of clothing shoved into one canvas bag and the old plastic clothes hamper yes, the one that holds cat food and the like, the one he had to actually DIG OUT OF THE CLOSET AND EMPTY to use.

That little vein in the middle of my forehead popped out. I gritted my teeth and spoke very slowly.

"There are some clothes that don't have to be ironed if they are taken out of the dryer and hung up promptly," I said. "You've seen me do that many times. Why did you shove these down into this hamper?"

He shrugged and gave me the smirk. "I don't know."

"THAT 'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH!" I shouted, lunging across the bed and taking his neck into my beefy hands and choking the life out of him.

OK, the above sentence was just my fantasy. What actually happened is, in the interest of preserving my five-year marriage, I silently plucked my polyester knits the kind that don't have to be ironed if removed from the dryer promptly out of the hamper and hung them up.

Later, when I was calm, I asked Mr. Half if he was a victim of Male Pattern Incompetence. After all, admission of a problem is the first step toward the cure.

"Not that I'm aware of," he replied.

Yeah, right.

Heidi Nieland is a former Southeast Missourian staff writer now living in Fort Lauderdale. Contact her at newsduo@herald.infi.net.