Want to put your marriage to the test?

Pick a destination in a large urban setting, a place you’ve never been to before in your life.

Then get in your car, with your wife, of course, and head out on the road and see what happens between the time you leave home and get to where you want to go.

Mrs. Gennings and myself tried the above test on Saturday.

Our destination was my cousin’s condo in Toronto. Now while we know the city well we’d never been to her pad.

“Do you want me to print off a map?” Mrs. Gennings said the day before we left.

“Oh no,” I replied. “Just grab the directions from Map Quest.”

Now this little exchange came back to haunt me. Because the next day we were in the bowels of the city, trying to find a tiny street north of Queen Street. And we were both convinced we’d missed a turn.

“You should have printed a !@#% map,” I said, a tad louder and grouchier than I should have.

To which Mrs. Gennings replied – a short while later: “You said we didn’t need a map, just directions, you schmuck,” or something like that.

But what I meant was I should have asked her to print a map, along with the directions. It’s just that in the heat of the moment my statement came out a tad garbled, what some linguists call man-speak.

And it didn’t help that the little map book that I keep in the glove box of my car failed to show all of downtown.

And it also didn’t help that traffic was incredibly heavy for a Saturday afternoon. Okay, so it did help a bit, in the sense that I was able to practice some colourful phrases.

Convinced we were thoroughly lost, we pressed on. Stopping and asking for help was not an option because yours truly was driving and such behaviour would be against The Man Code, chapter 3, paragraph 7.  

Luckily it turned out we weren’t lost at all. We just hadn’t quite gone south enough.

“Well that was pleasant,” I noted after driving up and down a side street for 20 minutes, looking for a place to park. “We should do that more often.”

But the way Mrs. Gennings shut the car door indicated otherwise.

“I’m sorry if I was a bit crusty there a while ago,” I said, as we trundled along the sidewalk.

Mrs. Gennings informed me that I should count to 10 before speaking in similar situations in the future, which I admit sounds like good advice.

Despite the whole experience though our marriage was intact.

We had passed the test.

Since we did so well on that marital challenge, we are trying to come up with a few more, such as:

• Two weeks in the Great White North with a baby and no grandparent support system.

• A road trip to Nova Scotia – with maps, directions and a big bag of breadcrumbs so we can find our way back to Ontario.

I will let you know how we make out as these events unfold. If I don’t come back but Mrs. Gennings does then you will know things did not go well. There probably was an incident that involved more man-speak so don’t go holding Mrs. G accountable for her actions.

I know, count to 10 before opening my mouth.

Michael Gennings is The Stayner Sun’s community editor. Feedback is welcome at mgennings@simcoe.com.