Chapter One

Chapter 1

Every Journey Begins
with a Pair of Socks


Let's start with my socks. Not the ones I'm wearing, but the ones I wore yesterday. The ones I took off last night and plopped on the floor in the general vicinity of the laundry basket. Yes, those socks. Those size-thirteen socks that are the biggest source of discord in my twenty-year marriage.

When my wife, Diane, comes across my socks—so close to the basket, yet so far from actually being in it—the incredulity begins to bubble up inside her. And then we have "the discussion," which starts out about socks and ends up being about the evolution of the species. It's the same place the discussion about the dirty dishes in the sink ends up.

Now, this discussion about the evolution of the species is actually quite fascinating—as long as you're not in the middle of it. As it begins, Diane, who has a high-school trophy on her shelf for "Best Negative Debater," poses this query: Are these socks (or dishes) left where they are because I don't remember she's asked me a million times not to leave them there, or because I remember being asked, but I just don't care that it matters to her?

While I'm trying to figure out which response would be better for the future of my marriage (or, as the guys in my regular half-court basketball game put it, "Which answer gets me laid?"), my wife, a novelist who also reads a lot of science books for fun, asks a second question. If I don't remember (which is sounding more and more like the right answer here), is it because I wasn't listening to her all the times she asked, or is there something wrong with me physiological