Most rational people believe firmly in the adage that behind every great woman lies an almost mediocre man.
Men have fought desperately hard to become almost mediocre, and there is a feeling amongst us, often expressed during television sport, that almost mediocre is enough, that we should quit while we are not far behind.
But I have always believed man could be much more than almost mediocre.
In our marriage, I aspire to being irreplaceable, vital and tremendously skilled.
And here I am talking specifically of car travel and prestigious dinner parties, the twin-hulled cornerstone of any marriage that matters.
I have never driven a car.
Very early on, I took it upon myself to handle the far more testing task of providing music for the driver of the car.
On long journeys, music is even more crucial than petrol.
And as for prestigious dinner parties, while I do cook - usually a sort of over-spiced mismatched fusion surprise - again I have chosen to cut my way through the far pricklier bramble bush that is providing the music.
Making CDs for long car journeys has crushed many weaker humans than I.
The secret is to know your driver.
As you sit there in the engine room of a car, the passenger seat, it is imperiously important to know which music to play at which time.
If my wife starts to nod off, I play Paint It Black by the Rolling Stones.
Within nanoseconds, her eyes are bulging out like cottage organ stops.
The nodding off is apparently because of my talking.
I always assumed searing wit and quicksilver wordplay would be the perfect fuel for a trip to Christchurch, but we've barely passed Pine Hill when the command comes to put something decent on.
So I put on I'm A King Bee by the Rolling Stones, a song that throws my wife back to the days when she was young and free, life was a carousel, and when cardboard wine ran like the mighty Manuherikia.
When Mick Jagger - did you know his current girlfriend is six feet four? - sings "And you know together we can make some honey, like the world ain't never known", my wife turns to me with a completely different face to the one she used to tell me if I seriously thought I had searing wit and quicksilver wordplay, then her bottom was a fire engine.
Prestigious dinner parties can be of Olympian difficulty.
Six or eight people! Virtually impossible.
But if my wife has bagsed cooking all day, then I don't mind doing the dirty work.
I don't mind making the music.
A few weeks ago, inexplicably on the night of the World Cup rugby league final, my wife decided to hold yet another prestigious dinner party.
It was the usual crew, reeking almost indecently of education and justice.
I had prepared well, leaning towards the alliterative psychobabble of mid-60s Bob Dylan for two of the women, and acknowledging the extensive early-70s recreational drug use of one of the men with some Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead.
The third woman was classically trained, and having seen what Messiaen can do to a dinner party, I chose instead some Velvet Underground, the tracks with a viola.
I also seated her next to me so if the Velvets didn't hit the spot, she would always have searing wit and quicksilver wordplay.
The second man was assuaged with Jeff Buckley, in whom he had expressed an interest at a previous quaff, while the third man just wanted to watch the rugby league.
It was a lovely dinner.
And while all the comments seemed to centre on the food, there was a simmering underbubbling of admiration, fittingly expressed in silence, for the music.
This is how it is for the almost mediocre man, condemned to a life of wordless gratitude.
Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
