In our house, my wife controls the remote control. As a result, I spend a huge amount of time watching shows I have no real interest in.

I can, to my great regret, tell you who's sleeping with whom on "Grey's Anatomy," or the exact episode in which Sarah Jessica Parker and the guy from "Northern Exposure" broke up on "Sex and the City." I have even (don't let this get around) watched a number of those Lifetime movies in which sweet innocent young women marry guys who turn out to be serial killers.

I have nothing against "Law & Order: SVU" other than that it seems to be on television 23 hours a day. My wife watches SVU obsessively not because she's a fan of crime dramas, but because she's waiting, week after excruciating week, for partners Olivia and Elliot to finally admit their love for each other. So we watch. And watch. (If one of them doesn't make a move soon, I'm throwing a brick through my TV.)

At some point between 10 and 10:15 p.m., however, I'll notice her slumping a little deeper into the couch, bunching a pile of pillows under her head, and the family dog will hop onto the couch and curl up with her. Most nights by 10:23 (I've timed it) she's breathing deeply, eyes closed, and the two of them are in full REM stage, throwing their own private slumber party.

Around 10:30, when I sneak over and try to get the remote from her hand, she'll wake with a start, clutch at the remote and claim that she was just resting her eyes and she's actually listening to every word. Even when she's too deep under to wake herself, the dog, who is a lighter sleeper, gives out a warning growl to sound the alarm when I make my move. This is particularly maddening, as we both know he has no interest in TV. (And he wonders why I never want to take him for a walk.)

Around 11 p.m., when it's time to go to bed and I start snapping off lights, she'll sit up with a start, eagerly asking "Did they do it yet?" By then, it's too late for me to watch anything else, and I just mutter, "Not yet, maybe next week," and trudge upstairs to bed.

I've tried everything I can think of, without success, to prove she's sleeping through shows I don't really want to watch. I've sat there with my hand in front of her face, I've taken pictures with my cell phone, then awakened her to show her my evidence. Once I tried to draw a mustache on her with an erasable marker, but the stupid dog barked.

I was complaining about this the other day to my brother when he interrupted me:

"Don't even talk to me. Did you see the BCS Title game between Florida and Ohio State?"

I told him I'd caught some of it but was out that evening at a meeting.

"The first half was supposed to be really exciting, but I didn't see it," he said. "We were watching the musical 'West Side Story.' "

I cupped the phone to my mouth.

"You don't want that to get around," I whispered. "Guys won't beat you up, but they'll want to. Awful bad."

There was nothing he could do, he said. It was his wife's favorite musical, and she'd been waiting for weeks for it to come on. The worst part, my brother said, was somewhere around the time former Jet Tony (the dancing kind, not the NFL kind) got stabbed in the playground and Maria was singing over his twitching corpse, he looked over and saw his wife on the couch, eyes closed and mouth open, in her own way just as dead to the world.

The other day, we were out with another couple, and the wives started talking about their favorite shows. They agreed that they both loved "Grey's Anatomy." I turned to the husband.

"You don't watch it, do you?"

He shook his head violently. Then his wife turned to us.

"He missed the first season," she said, "but I got it for him on DVD so he can catch up."

It's sad. All across America tonight, husbands will be watching television shows they don't really like and can't really hear because of all the snoring. But not me.

I went out to an electronics store yesterday and bought a second remote.