Computer Technology and the Harvard Business School Can Help
I’ve been married more than once, but never to more than one woman at a time. So each time I read about the fundamentalist Mormon enclave in Colorado City, Arizona where some men apparently have as many as 70 wives, I say — “Whaaaa…?”
Seventy wives? Surely, any reasonable polygamist would consider, say, 40 wives to be enough. But 70? At one time? Just from a management standpoint, how do you organize that? Could someone from the Harvard Business School please weigh in here?
Consider the daily question in every marriage: “Honey, do I look okay in this dress?” As any loving husband knows, answering that is a no-win situation with just one wife. How do you handle it 70 times each morning? Do they line up and each one gets 15 seconds?
“Yes, Dear. You look great. Next…”
Judging from the news photos, the Arizona polygamists have solved this daily attire management dilemma with dowdy uniforms — shapeless, one-size, one-color, and one-bonnet fits all.
Thankfully, the baggy sameness of the dresses nips another no-win marital conversation in the bud: “Honey, do you think I’m getting fat?” Or this plaintive query sure to give any husband pause before answering: “Honey, should I stop wearing shorts because of how my legs look?”
Then there’s the difficulties that come with managing family finances.
Who wants a parade of 70 women, each waving this month’s credit card bill in your face and saying, “Hooter’s? What were you doing at Hooter’s?” Or, “You’ve got to stop going to Home Depot. We can’t afford any more unnecessary tools. No more Home Depot? Got that, Mr. Big Spender?”
If he’s got the right management skills, the savvy 70-wife polygamist solves the money problems by appointing a CFW — Chief Financial Wife.
Or consider this very mundane part of married life — remembering your wives’ names. Confronted with a class of 70 students, many college professors never learn all their names in the course of a semester. How do you remember the names of 70 wives, even if you have encountered every one of them in bed with her clothes off at least once?
Obviously, the savvy polygamist uses some kind of name tag system. “Hi! My Name is Rebecca. I’ve been your wife since 1987.”
But maybe a simple name tag isn’t enough. Assuming that each wife has an average of two children, that’s 140 kids. And if you’ve been in the polygamy game a while, how do you remember the names of possibly hundreds of grandkids, let alone who the mother and grandmother of each child is?
Looks to me like everybody needs to be carrying around some kind of family tree passport. You open it up and there’s the mother’s name and particulars and a list of all her children and their pictures, and then the same rundown on the grandchildren.
I don’t know how techie these 70-wife polygamists are, but here’s the ultimate identity solution: implant a sub-dermal identity chip in every single member of the family. Then you carry around a laptop or a Bluetooth or some kind of PDA that tells you at a glance who you are talking to and what their entire lineage is.
With such a system in place, when you climb into bed at night, all you have to do is surreptitiously check your PDA to identify your partner for the night, see her whole history at a glance, and be able to fully welcome her by using her first name.
Really, nothing is a bigger turnoff for a polygamist wife than to have the hubby climb into bed and inquire, “Now which one are you?”