.
dudes.
remember when I found this?
the first page of the marital rating scale from 1939?
and we were all like, 'whoa, that's so crazy people actually thought like this'?
well this morning I found the whole thing.

obviously I needed to print it out and see how ben and I rated right then and there.
these kinds of things can't wait for opportune times like lunch or after work.
they demand to be taken now.
middle of the morning at work be damned.
reflected ceiling plans can wait.
this could not.

the whole scale has a chart for the husband as well as for the wife.
needless to say, ben fared much better than I, because while reading the paper at the table may count as a demerit for the dude, wearing red nail polish is seen as a demerit for the chick.
and husbands get 20 points for being good in bed, while the wife only gets 10.
equal opportunity was not even on the horizon here.
and I get knocked down a point for wearing pajamas instead of nightgowns.
it's the late 30's. you know how it goes.

in the end ben racked up an impressive 82 points (96 merits and 14 demerits), landing him in the "very superior" category.
(knew I snagged myself a good'un)

I, on the other hand, ended up with a measly 35 points (68 merits and 33 demerits).
categorized as "poor".
my only consolation is this was above the "very poor (failure)" category.

I may make a horrible house-wife, but I am not quite a failure.
it's the small things.

update: ben went through and filled out the 'wife' portion for me. he was much nicer than I was to myself. he gave me a whopping 46 points (75 merits and 25 demerits), which pushes me up to "average". woohoo!

do yourself a favor and go check this thing out.
even if it's thoroughly depressing in it's reflections of how repressed women were back then, it's still pretty darn funny.

.