There's just two ways, as I see it, to find out your wife is stepping out on you. The first, worst, way is to find out in such a way that other people know that you know - you know? In other words, some buddy of yours tells you at a bar, or the wife of the asshole your wife is stepping out with mails you the pics that her private eye snapped in a hotel parking lot someplace.

The other way, which leaves a bunch more options, is if you figure it out for yourself. You start noticing that the bank account isn't showing any more money, despite the "overtime" she's working. Or there's some stains on her panties, or her friend she goes to see every weekend calls and complains that she hasn't seen her in ages.

Or, you could find out like I did, and come home at the wrong time.

Now, like I said before, I've read a bunch of stuff - that fucker Just Plain Bob has pretty much written down every possible way to get "the surprise" - and I've thought about it, and it pretty much comes down to (A) other people know that you know; or (B) they don't.

And I've thought about this, a fair amount. I've thought about a lot of things, because there are a lot of situations that you don't want to have to face without a little advance planning. Like that pilot, Sully Sullenburger, that crash-landed that plane in the river in New York City. That fucking guy practiced the shit out of emergency situations, all the time. He wrote about them, gave speeches about them, taught other pilots about them. For all I know, once a month he'd be screwing his wife and she'd yell out "mid-air collision, number 2 engine is out, hydraulics are gone, what do you do?" and he'd have to answer before she'd finish him off.

Anyway, whatever his technique, that cool handed fucker splashed down like he was flying a seaplane. The biggest problem they had (I swear I'm not making this shit up) was that the life rafts are strapped to the airplane doorway, and the fucking TSA rules about nobody taking anything sharper than a tampon on board meant they had to - no shit - borrow a fucking knife from one of the rescue boat guys to cut the raft loose before the plane sank. (Your fucking tax dollars at work. Thanks, assholes.)

Anyway, I don't have any kind of system like Sully did, but I like to think about what I'd do in certain situations. They're pretty general, but I think they're important. For example, some guy breaks in to your house, and you shoot him. Do you drag him all the way inside the house? Your state law matters in cases like that, and you need to be 100% fucking sure what to do in advance, because the neighbors are probably gonna call the cops when you put that "and stepped on" round into his forehead. It's not like you can go to the library and look that shit up at 3:00 am.

Here's another one: suppose you win the Lottery. What do you do? I mean, do you know the laws and rules and shit for the tickets you're buying? It probably doesn't matter if you're playing one of those $20,000 games - that's just a little money to pay off your idiot daughter's credit card debt, and maybe a new car for the wife. But suppose you win one of those "all the fucking money in the world" games. You remember that guy Jack Whittaker? That guy had a bunch of money already. As I understand it, he owned a construction company worth a few million bucks. And the fucking lottery destroyed his life. His granddaughter dead of drugs, himself sued a couple of hundred times, his daughter dead, himself a target of thieves and scammers. That's the kind of shit that nobody needs. Nobody. So if you win the "big one," what do you do?

I guess what I'm getting that is that when I came home the other night and found my fucking next door neighbor "plowing my fields," as it were, I had already given some thought to the possibility. Not in specific - I don't have a separate plan for "my wife is getting it on with my friend" versus "my wife is getting it on with her college boyfriend" - but in general, I knew what I was going to do.

I will say that it surprised me how much she kept trying to go on after I hit him. I mean, I cracked him hard enough that he just went limp (his body, anyway) but she kept on chasing her cookies for a couple of seconds. It wasn't until I put the first trash bag over his head that she realized something was wrong, and it still took her a few seconds before she started the "Eeek! Oh, no!" stuff that - according to the internet - every wife starts spouting. Maybe women have some sort of "I've been caught by my husband screwing the neighbor" drill that they have to practice?

Anyway, she started right in with "I can explain," and "it was only sex," but I knew that the fucking clock started ticking as soon as I hit that worthless fuckwad, so I wasn't about to waste any time a-hollerin'. I just told her, "Get dressed, and hurry."

Naturally, she wanted to explain, and to talk, and just in general to run off at the fucking mouth - hell, she's a woman, it's what they're good at, and if the fucking clock didn't start ticking as soon as I hit that shitbird, I'd have let her. She was going to have to talk it out sooner or later. But according to my plan, it would have to be later, because the clock was ticking. Fortunately, my plan allowed a minute or two to get her ass in gear. Hell, if my plan didn't allow for "woman + problem = yap yap yap" it wouldn't be any kind of plan, would it?