It’s a tradition. Beautiful Wife walks into the house after spending an hour with her friends at a three-times-a-week exercise class.

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“How was school?” I always ask.

It’s a play on what used to happen when our children left the nest for elementary school, climbing onto the bus in the morning, jumping off it at night.

Once BW stopped following the bus to school – I think the day all the kids on the bus started waving to her finally put paid to that tradition. Instead, she started asking our kids about their day as soon as they got home again.

So, after working in my downstairs office for much of the morning, then lumbering up the stairs with a late breakfast on my mind, I spotted post-exercise-class BW camped out on the living room couch.

“So, how was…”

Normally, there’d be groans and complaints about how hard it was. Or a pleased-as-punch description of how she’d really kicked that hour’s backside as she flew through the workout.

Not this day. Instead, the palm of BW’s right hand greeted me. The universal signal for ‘talk to the hand.” As in,........

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