Monday's shirt

It's Monday. I return home a bare minute after having left for work in the morning.

"Back already? That was quick," says my wife. It's one of her favourite jokes.

"I have to change my sweater." I explain.

"What? Too much cat hair on it?"

"I realised that I wore it last Wednesday." I explain.

"It's your Wednesday shirt. Yeah, you can't wear that on a Monday." she is still joking, and her good mood this early in the morning makes me suspicious. She doesn't like mornings.

"I have number theory on Mondays and Wednesdays," I explain. "I can't wear the same sweater two classes in a row. The students will notice. "

I had a chemistry teacher in high school who always wore the same jacket. He had a PhD, so insisted that the students address him as Doctor. That explains him, mostly. But the foremost thing that students associated with him is that jacket that he always wore.

"They won't notice what you are wearing." My wife says. "They don't care." She has moved from happy to belittling, it's her preferred morning mood.

"Of course they will. It's bright red!"

"Even if they notice, they don't care."

"Then what are they always writing about on their laptops in my class. They are writing on their blogs. Criticizing my wardrobe."

"If they are criticizing your wardrobe, it is not the depth of the bench they are criticizing, its the age of the players."

This is a new side to my wife. I've never heard her use metaphor before, let alone sports metaphors. I find it beguiling. I'm not sure if she is saying that their criticism would about my age, or about my out-of-style clothes, but the fact that she is using literary variety in a morning conversation is refreshing.

What is not refreshing though, is that again she is wrong. However she dresses up her misconception, that remains what it is.

"Typing away with clickity clackity fingers." I go on, "Making conjecture about our laundry cycle."

"They type in class? Or use a tablet?" she asks.

"That's unimportant."

"I just wonder how student's take notes these days. I would have thought they would use a tablet. How fast can you type out notes? Especially math notes. All those equations."

"Yeah." I say, thinking about it. "It's probably tablets."

"So they aren't writing on blogs, are they?"

"Wait." I say. "Were you trying to trick me?"

"No. It just doesn't seem like they are writing blogs. Only old people do that anyways. Young people post on social media. They do it on their phones."

"That's probably what they are doing then. Instagramming each other about what I am wearing. Facebooking pictures of me. Kakaoing my mistakes to their friends."

"Teaching in the modern age is fraught with peril."

"Yeah." I say, "That's why I gotta change."

I do change, and then go to school. But as I walk to school, I can't help thinking that my wife's sudden capitulation is hiding something. It's like she had to distract me for a heist.