Lisa Scottoline: Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman

But that’s not my point.

My point is, where is the religion that allows a woman to have as many husbands as she pleases?

I could get very religious about a religion like that, but there isn’t one. It’s like The Stepford Wives, where the wives are robots who do everything to please their husbands. What I want to know is, where are the Stepford Husbands?

You know why it’s set up this way. The book that started the religion was written by a man, and the book that started the Stepford Wives was written by a man.

Well, I write books, too. Can I start a religion?

In my religion, wives could have as many husbands as they wanted. So far, I’ve had as many ex-husbands as I wanted, but that’s not the same thing.

You can see how my new religion would open up a world of possibilities. For example, in my life, neither Thing One nor Thing Two was very handy around the house. So my first new husband would have to be handy. I’ll call him Fix-it Hubby. I really like a guy who can fix the doorbell. Or that rubber thing inside the toilet tank that’s supposed to flop up and down. Things have gotten so bad around my house that, last week, a friend of mine sent her husband over to fix that rubber thing.

That was when I turned to religion to solve my problems.

My second new husband would have to be sexy, and if you need me to tell you what he’s for, you’re new around here. I’ll call him Sexy Hubby. Every woman has her own idea about what constitutes sexy, but mine involves chest hair.

My third new husband would do chores, like take out the trash and unload the groceries. Chores are all I’d ever ask of this very lucky man. I hate to do chores, and who doesn’t? I’ll call him Chore Hubby. And my fourth new husband would have to be a great cook. It would be fun to have a husband who cooks, especially if he looks like Chef Tom Colicchio on Top Chef.

I’ll call him Tom Colicchio.

How great is this religion, so far?

I think women would love this religion, and so would men. The advantages for women are obvious, but there are plenty of advantages for men, too. After all, it means that your husbands could avoid the more tiresome of your marital duties. For example, you could be Sexy Hubby and leave fixing the toilet to Toilet Hubby.

Or vice versa, if it’s playoff season. You only have to fix a toilet once and it stays fixed, if you follow.

My new religion is also good for men, because, frankly, I know a lot of women who are a Handful. Actually, I’ve figured out that I’m a Handful. So of course, any woman worth having is a Handful. But in my religion, all the hubbies could band together to keep the Handful happy, and that creates certain efficiencies and economies of scale, which is the kind of thing men love.

Because it leaves more time for the playoffs.

The other great thing about my new religion is that there would never be divorce. If you got sick of Toilet Hubby, you wouldn’t have to divorce him, you could just marry Car Inspection Hubby. It’s really annoying to have to get the car inspected all the time, and you can never find your registration card. In fact, you could marry Registration Hubby, too. And Proof-of-Insurance Hubby.

Why not?

Then you wouldn’t ever have to leave the bedroom.

If you follow.

Finally, the best thing about my religion would be who got worshipped. In the religion where you have tons of wives, they all worship the husband. And if you have lots of robot wives, they worship the husbands, too.

So you see where this is going.

Wanna join?

I used to think of myself as low-maintenance. I used to believe I was easy to please. But now I know better.

Starbucks taught me the truth.

My order at Starbucks is a vente iced green-tea latte, breve, no melon syrup, light ice. I love my drink. It’s a treat I give myself a few times a week. I give myself all manner of food rewards, because I’m an emotional eater. Can you think of a better reason to eat?

But back to Starbucks. I was standing in line behind a tall sugar-free cinnamon dolce latte with nonfat milk no-whip, who was standing behind a grande iced non-fat no-whip mocha. When it came to my turn, I gave my order and watched my hard-working barista like a disapproving mother, to make sure he didn’t add the melon syrup.

One time, my barista made a mistake and added the melon syrup. I took a sip and then threw the entire drink away. I won’t drink it with the melon syrup. And I couldn’t bring myself to ask the barista to redo it, because I couldn’t admit to him or myself that I’d become a woman who refuses to drink something that isn’t exactly the way she wants it.

But I have.

I always order salads with the dressing on the side and no croutons. I always use Splenda and not Equal. I like Half-and-Half or light cream in my coffee, but not milk. I like strawberry preserves, but don’t come near with me with strawberry jelly.

How did I get like this?

I was standing in Whole Foods the other day, mesmerized by the yogurt. I used to be fine with normal vanilla yogurt, then I switched to strawberry. But here I was, dazzled in the dairy aisle, astounded by white yogurt containers gleaming like pearls on a strand. There was normal yogurt from cows, but there was also goat’s milk yogurt, buffalo milk yogurt, nonfat yogurt, low-fat yogurt, and yogurt in a bottle, so you could drink it. There was yogurt with normal bacteria and yogurt with special bacteria.

Uh-oh. I had no idea how to choose bacteria. Generally, bacteria is the kind of thing I like to avoid.

In short, I could have it the way I wanted, but I wasn’t sure how I wanted it. Then I started to wonder about when all these choices began, and when we started to customize germs.

Maybe it goes back to Burger King’s “Have it Your Way” campaign. Before then, back when we didn’t know better, we ate hamburgers with whatever they put on them. The Burger King campaign was a response to McDonald’s “Have it Our Way” approach, which meant that every burger came with a pickle, ketchup, and chopped onion bits.

In those days, if you didn’t like the pickle, you were forced to take matters into your own hands. You had to handle the situation all by yourself. You had to take the pickle off.

Likewise, if you didn’t like ketchup, you had to cope. You either had to eat your hamburger with the ketchup and try to live another day, or you had to find yourself a plastic knife and scrape that ketchup right off.

We were like MacGyver then, full of ingenuity.

But those days are over. We started having it our way and we never stopped. And somewhere along the line, there sprung up 300 million choices for every product, and I became the pickiest person on the planet.

That’s it. It must be Burger King’s fault. Because it can’t be mine.

But here’s the hard question: Have all these choices made us happier? Am I really, truly, happier for all of those choices?

Absolutely.

I love it. I love having everything exactly the way I want it. I work hard to earn the money to buy myself my food rewards. I’m like a puppy giving myself Milk Bones-which come in cheese, liver, and regular flavor.

And I even love the dairy aisle, dazzling me with choice. When I clap eyes on all those yogurts, my heart swells with pride. I’m lucky to live in a country armed with powerful marketing weapons, all of which are aimed at little old me. They’ve succeeded in convincing me that there really is a difference between these products, and that the difference is critical.