It’s hard to have a grown-up discussion with your wife when your fly is down or your shirt is inside-out. But it can be done! I’m living proof of this. Frequently.

The trick is to compensate by using big words and deep philosophical concepts. For instance, you can say, “It’s an entirely admissible error to have one’s shirt inverted when you take into account an extreme deficit of proper sleep.”

Or when she points out your barn door is half open, you can look down, close it up and smoothly explain, “Do not be a pessimist. The zipper was half up, not half down.”

Side note, those suggestions won’t help at all. Wives are immune to such strategies. Just zip up, turn your shirt right way round and move on.

We all grow up learning the tricks and gimmicks of trying to appear to be adults. Maybe there are some people out there that are actually honest to goodness for real grown-ups, but I feel like it’s a bit of a act for the vast majority of us.

Most of us are just kids in bigger, wrinklier bodies, trying to do our best to seem mature around the other big kids, and set an adult-ish example for all the still little kids.