So I am sitting at dinner with my wife and she pulls out her phone and starts tapping. Tapping. Tapping. We have been married a long time, but seriously?
This has been happening more and more when it’s just the two of us. At first I thought she was checking in at work or logging on to TMZ to see which celebrity couple had moving vans in front of their house that day. I started to look for more self-assuring reasons she was ignoring me, like she was texting one of our kids.
But that wasn’t it. And she started to reach for her phone even when we were with the kids or out with friends. Tapping. Tapping. Tapping.
Then I found out: She has been communicating with a little jerk I call Frank.
To be fair, there was one before Frank. I called him Larry. But even Larry was quickly replaced, because he could not do the things for my wife that Frank could do.
When my wife slept with Larry, she had to tell him she was going to bed. But this new Fitbit, er, Frank, is so advanced he actually knows when she’s sleeping. And Frank can track her heart rate. Larry didn’t seem to know she had a pulse.
I have been talking with other men who are going through the same thing. Their wives or girlfriends will tell them they are going to check the mail only to return 20 minutes later because they made six laps around the block.
Suddenly, they want
us to push the shopping carts. It turns out that if their arms aren’t swinging, the oddment around their wrist can’t correctly count their steps. And they admit that, when at the office, they’ll purposefully print to the farthest possible copier so they can get more steps in.
Frank is also now tracking the calorie intake for my wife, hence all the tapping at meals. If I ask her if she would like to have a glass of wine with me, she first has to check with the health czar to see if there’s any room under the daily cap.
But I think Frank’s days may be numbered. At first, he was only asking for 10,000 steps a day. Now, he’s pushing for 12,000. Even my wife is beginning to think that that may be a bit extreme.
Frank also does not seem to be counting steps as accurately as Larry had. On a recent trip across two rooms, she was only credited with six steps. Upon retracing her route, she clearly should have been given 20. She admitted that when she bought Frank, she was told the model had problems.
Take it from her husband, Frank, if you short her steps, you will be replaced. We are both watching you.
Tim Tonelli is a cartographer from Highlands Ranch.
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