Something happened that shocked me to my core the other day.

We have a standard pattern of doing things around our house. It's a finely tuned system and it works. My wife and I get home from work at exactly the same time every night because we "carpool" together. (By carpool, I mean I drive her from the front door of our house to the front door of her office, leaving about the time she wants and picking her up again about the time she wants to leave, which is, come to think about it, better defined as "chauffer service.")

When we do get home, I look at the mail, cringing at the sight of bills and student loan letters, and then say hello to the kids, who are invariably on the couch watching TV. (They're really just watching the same episode over and over of that show about those blond twin boys who live in a hotel.)

Then, my wife starts to get dinner ready while I go upstairs to change. By "change," I mean that I go upstairs to our bedroom, loosen my tie and turn on the TV. If there's something good on, I watch it. If there's nothing good on, I stare at the screen for a few moments, and sometimes I doze off. (By "sometimes," I mean almost every single day. )

Soon, however, I start to smell dinner cooking, and I think about getting up but in reality do absolutely nothing. I once jumped the gun and came downstairs when I just smelled something and had to go all the way back up because it was going to be a while.

When dinner is closer to being ready, my wife will call up the stairs at the top of her lungs, "Peter! Dinner's almost ready!" (Here, "Dinner's almost ready!" has always meant, to me at least, "Dinner's not actually ready yet, so see if you can get a little more shut-eye!")

Then, when dinner is about to be served, one of the girls will come upstairs, stand in the doorway of our bedroom and say, so sternly that I actually feel sorry for her future husband, "Dad! Mom says 'NOW!' " (That actually does mean dinner's ready.) When that happens, I get changed real quickly and get downstairs. If I time it right, I come in the kitchen just as food is being ladled out.

Last Wednesday, however, everything went horribly wrong.

I came home, looked at the bills and went upstairs to change out of my suit. Once in the bedroom, I loosened my tie, stretched out on the bed and turned on the TV. Nothing good was on, so I switched to a fishing show (the perfect sedative -- if it's bass fishing on a lake, I could fall into a temporary coma). It was, and I began to feel woozy.

Dinner started to smell pretty good, but I'm experienced enough at this point that I just waited it out. Another 15 minutes passed, and my wife yelled from the bottom of the steps, "Peter! Dinner's almost ready!" So far, so good.

About 15 minutes after that, I started to get concerned. There was no angry little girl at the door. I started to wonder if some emergency had occurred. Just to be on the safe side, I waited another 10 minutes, then struggled to my feet and trudged down the steps.

When I got to the kitchen, I found the entire family finishing up dinner.

"You ATE," I said, (here, "said" means "bellowed.") "without ME!" My wife shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.

"I called for you," she said. "I told you dinner was ready."

"You said 'Dinner's almost ready!' Not 'Dinner's ready!' Dinner's 'almost ready!' That's not how it works! You said 'almost!' "

My kids looked at me with concern. My wife just smiled sweetly and said, "Next time, maybe you'll come when I call you!" (Here, "concern" means "slight fear," and "sweetly" means ... trust me, not "sweetly.")

I would have argued further, but I noticed my 15-year-old son was going for seconds, and I'd have to move quickly if I didn't want to go hungry. I only got leftovers, but I learned a valuable lesson:

Women just don't understand how to communicate very well.