A brilliant plan, right? (Note: For those now itching to curse me out for my manipulative ways, I wish you luck. Your condemnations have nothing on the anxiety moms get when they have 39 things to do and three and a half minutes before the baby wakes up. I say, all's fair in love and child rearing.)

And you know, now that I'm thinking about it, I suspect fly-fishing (and possibly golf) was invented by women so they could barter for some quiet time. Can't you imagine? About 15,000 years ago, the gatherers (women) were getting the fruit and nuts before it was their turn to watch the kids and roast dinner. The hunters (men) were walking behind them (a little too close) and asking them questions without waiting for answers. "Do we need all those nuts? Why can't you get the really good fruit on the other side of the delta that my mother uses? Oh, while you're over there, don't forget to be on the lookout for a carcass, preferably fresh, but not too fresh—the last one you got was too fresh."

At the end of their rope, the gatherers sent the hunters fishing, even though they didn't really need fish. And boom, suddenly a culture becomes what the anthropologists call agro-pastoral. The men followed the fish while we worked on the next stage of social evolution (which I think was the invention of the wedge shoe). Then fishing became a "passion" characterized by lying about the ones that got away and waxing nostalgic about the great outdoors, and nothing got done on weekend mornings for about 14,000 years, until we figured out that those mornings were perfect for shoe shopping. This of course led to the modern parental bartering system, in which 30 minutes of tantrum duty was worth two hours of solo shoe shopping. Or was that two tantrums and one bedtime story or toothbrushing equals one hour of shoe shopping or two hours of fishing? Wow, reducing complex human behavior into prehistoric parables is fun. Though I haven't yet figured out where golf fits into all this. (Note: For those now itching to curse me out for my sexist ways, I say write your own parable.)

So, I'm done. I've got a circus coming to town for Gabe and a new hobby for Cory. Though I'm told that fly-fishing is a calling or some such nonsense like that. And now I'm celebrated out until at least the Fourth of July. And I'd like to thank you, Orvis, for improving my work-life balance and possibly making me wife of the year. Oh, and don't worry about this column ruining the surprise; I'll just tell him I wrote about shoes and he'll never read it.

© 2009