Keep Excel to yourself

Last Sunday, Sean and two other gentlemen from church had to give announcements. The first, a businessman and the second, an attorney, each spoke sans notes. Sean, though, got up and proudly flashed his paper, saying, “I’m an engineer and I use notes!” He proceeded to go down his list, hit all his points and sit down. (Trust me when I say he would not have taken his seat if he hadn’t ticked off each point.)

Last night, a friend who is also married to an engineer and witnessed the announcements, told me she thought we should have a support group for wives of engineers. She mentioned that her husband regularly tries to get her to make lists and charts to show progress in her endeavors.  We had a good laugh at that, and another when I told her that Sean, thinking he was being helpful, said he’d be willing to make a chart of my modest weight loss. “We could show the downward slope of the …” He said more but I honestly could not make sense of it because the horror of the thought caused my brain to shut down. Number one, if Sean thinks I’m going to tell him how much I weigh, he is living in La La Land, and number two, there is no way I want a chart of that hanging around.

 

I cannot count the number of times Sean has suggested a chart for this or a graph for that. When we have our weekly budget chats he wants to see the pie chart and the bar graph of our spending. Man, just show me the numbers, let’s make sure they’re all black and I’m good to go. Not him. Oh, no. He has to inspect each line and bar and make sure everything’s A OK. Which he would know if he’d just look at the pretty, black numbers…

Now, if you’re not married to an engineer, you may not understand the need for such a support group; if you are, however, I know you want to join.  I’m thinking about holding meetings at a local coffee shop. I’m sure Sean would love to come up with a check-in sheet and would gladly graph the attendance.