So I’m working on my latest painting, featuring a big-eyed girl being menaced by an enraged puppet of Napoleon Bonaparte. (Look, don’t ask why. It’s just easier that way.)

James looked at this and said “His nose is too big for Napoleon.”

“What? It’s a puppet! And how do you know what Napoleon looks like?”

“I know what Napoleon looks like,” said James, unruffled.

“Oh, the hell you say.” I wasn’t letting this one go. (I have a hard time letting things go.) “You couldn’t pick him out of a line-up.”

“I could totally pick Napoleon out of a line-up!”

“Without the hat and the outfit and the hand?”

“I so could.”

“FINE!”

And that, dear reader, is how I spent the next half hour assembling a Photoshop line-up of headshots in order to Prove James Wrong. I had to stick to oil paintings of the era, so that the look wouldn’t give it away, and photoshop out anything telling details.

“No Napoleon impersonators!” he yelled from the kitchen. “Or Elvis impersonators dressed as Napoleon!”

I started to scoff at this, then realized…internet…no, best not to think about it.

James, to his infinite credit, narrowed my chosen six down to two headshots, one of which was indeed Napoleon. But at the critical moment, he picked the Duke of Wellington instead, an irony I wasn’t about to let slip (the Duke of Wellington, for people not up on their Napoleonic history, defeated Napoleon decisively at the Battle of Waterloo.)

Still, he got points for reducing it to “people at Waterloo.”

“Aren’t you glad I don’t work at home any more?” he asked.

“Yeah. Things like this would seriously cut into my productivity.”

That I have a husband who takes this sort of thing in stride is a sign of how very fortunate I am…