I have often wondered if my wife was a Vampire. Like most married men, I am sure we have all thought at one time or another that our wives were Vampires-or some variation of a demon. This view doesn't only come by way of a close examination of my wallet the day after I get paid. There are other signs that have led me to this conclusion. Like the fact that before I was married, I seemed to be able to remember birthdays and, of course, the date we met. However what is most troubling is the fact I seemed to have lost the ability to speak clearly.

    Now I cannot seem to remember my own children's names and I stutter every time my wife speaks directly to me. I believe she has somehow been able to drain me of all reasonability. Of course, she defends herself by saying I have never been reasonable in the first place, and if I stopped lying to her, I wouldn't stutter. For the most part, perhaps she's right; I just can't seem to remember how I was before I got married, and I don't lie by the way. I just add a little extra mustard to the hot dog from time to time.

   Like any reasonable husband, trying to come to grips with the reality of married life, with all its attributes, I have found it a simple matter to happily tread my way through a co-existence, a co-existence that depends on carnal role being left  unchallenged. Which is, of course, “The female can only study the proper study of the female mind?"

     With that said, it is harder said than done-as any married man will attest to. I have done the rational investigations with respect to trying to find out if my wife was a Vampire or not. Not that she has displayed any characteristics associated with a Vampire. Perhaps I have simply spent too much time trying to study her mind. I've combed through her hair at 2 am holding my flashlight in one hand looking for 666 or any unusual markings on her skull. Naturally, I was caught by her, and have not done that again. No matter how many times you try to explain what the dickens you were doing, you just end up digging a deeper hole. My advice is don't try that, or you'll end up on the sofa for a month, and you'll never get your flashlight back.

     Being the happily married man that I am, I should have realized that most of the time that I figured my wife was a Vampire comes around the start of football season and that brief period of the month that we men find a complete inconvenience. Naturally, this brief period is when I am most unreasonable, according to my wife.

    I have tried to reason out this Vampire thing. I have always figured myself as an educated kind of fella. Nevertheless, I think there really is something to the whole affair. After all, we are too infatuated with this lore for it to be of no substance. I believe in substance and I believe my wife still might be a Vampire. Why else after two years she hasn't yet given me back my flashlight.

       This whole Vampire quest of mine came by way of my youth. Growing up in rural Kansas didn't afford me much an opportunity to meet many Vampires. As a matter of fact, meeting Vampires in rural Kansas is not very high on anyone's agenda. Not that the rest of the country is somehow swarming with them. To tell the truth, I don't recall really seeing a true real life Vampire ever, outside of my older brother biting me on the neck with a set of plastic fangs when we were kids. Which, of course, doesn't quite fit the bill.

   Now we folks here in Kansas do have our share of abnormalities; after all, Kansas is the home of Dorothy and her little dog, the Wizard of Oz, tornadoes, flying houses and munchkins all wrapped up in one.

    Which of course has led to a cottage industry around here, and my wife has made a pretty good living, representing some of the corporations that do legal work, with various ties to the whole Wizard of Oz hoopla.

    One of her biggest links to the pot of pyrite at the end of the rainbow is the Kansas Visitors' association. Seems these people are always praying that Dorothy and her little dog never come home. Sorta like Gilligan never getting rescued-it would ruin the whole affair. Now with the Oz thing taking center stage around here, Vampires are not very high on the totem pole when following the yellow brick road is concerned.

     Nevertheless, like most people, I have always wondered if such a creature really exists. Vampires that is. I am fairly certain the Wizard of Oz was window dressing, cooked up to take peoples mind off the dust bowl.

   You either had that or the Grapes of Wrath. As one Kansas newspaperman said in 1935, with respect to the Dust Bowl that is, " Lady Godiva could ride through the streets without even the horse seeing her." 

   All things considered, Kansas needed a sideline and Dorothy fit the bill. There is only so much you could do with truckload of dirt poor, white migrant workers.