Who's better at four random activities: Me or my wife?

Activity #1: Putting up a tent
I used to sleep over my friend Todd Donnelly's house quite a bit. In the summer, we would sleep in a tent in his backyard. I always felt much better when I arrived at Todd's house and the tent was already up. Otherwise I would have to help him put it together, and I'm terrible at that kind of thing. Todd was very good at it. So is my wife. Terry and her family all seem to possess the skills necessary for wilderness survival, so tent construction is nothing to them.

Don't get me wrong: If given some canvas and ropes and a set of instructions, I could eventually mold the pieces into some tent-related shape. I mean, it's not like I would fail completely. But it would take a long time. Like hours, maybe. Terry, on the other hand, instinctively knows that Pole A slides into Tab B and is secured by Line C to Stake D. She just knows, and thus tent assembly is a breeze when she's there. Terry will have a tent up and will be crawling into her sleeping bag by the time I figure out how to remove all the parts from the storage bag.
ADVANTAGE: Terry

Activity #2:Killing spiders
I grew up watching old cartoons that perpetuated hilarious stereotypes. As it turns out, some of those stereotypes are actually true. One is that women are afraid of insects and small woodland creatures. In my experience, yeah, that's pretty well dead on.

My wife and my daughters are strong, confident women. They can do absolutely anything they put their minds to. But plop a daddy longlegs in front of them and they become helpless. This is both hilarious and annoying. I'll be minding my own business in one part of the house when suddenly I hear screams of terror coming from the kitchen. I race down to see what the problem is, and I find a mother and daughter huddled in abject fear while a spider -- MAYBE three-quarters of an inch long -- crawls across the counter.

Never mind that on a straight scale of weight and overall potential to cause harm, these women could destroy the daddy longlegs. They want nothing to do with the arachnid, and it's clearly my job to dispose of it. Now. So I grab a paper towel and crush the spider, and order is restored.

I'll never understand it -- and clearly there are many women for whom spiders are no problem -- but score this one a clear victory for my side.
ADVANTAGE: Me

Activity #3: Parallel parking
As a man, I am expected to be able to parallel park. Most guys can do it well...something to do with spatial thinking and the ability to judge distances or some such. Yeah, well, I must have been sick the day they taught this particular skill in Man Class because I'm not especially good at it.

Again, though, it's like the tent thing: I can do it, just not quickly or in any really skilled way. Terry does it well, and I attribute it to the fact that she learned to drive in a station wagon. And I'm talking about one of those late 70's gunboat-sized station wagons that were 47 feet wide. Her parents' driveway was narrow, and to navigate it you had to squeeze the car between the house on one side and a chain link fence on the other. It was hard enough going forward, almost possible backing up (at least for me).

One time I was backing Terry's 1988 Chevy Beretta out of that driveway. This, you understand, was her pride and joy -- the first car she ever bought and to this day still the only new car she has owned. I had seen her take the station wagon through this tricky little passage a hundred times. How hard, I wondered, could it be in a smaller vehicle?

So for whatever reason, I was backing the Beretta out of the driveway. At some point of the operation, the part of my brain that monitors direction, angles, clearance and all of the other data you need to move a car successfully from Point A to Point B decided to take a little break. I was so worried about hitting the fence on the right side that I forgot about the extremely immovable house on the left.

You can pretty much guess what happened next. As it turns out, those driver's side mirrors tear off the car in surprisingly easy fashion. You'd think they'd reinforce those things.

Anyway, yet again, there's no contest here.
ADVANTAGE: Terry

Activity #4: Building and successfully detonating an atomic bomb
This is a tough one to call. On the one hand, Terry never took chemistry, so I have to think I have the advantage when it comes to figuring out how to harvest and enrich the uranium fuel. But a bomb requires a whole bunch of parts and the knowledge of how they fit together. Terry does jigsaw puzzles really well. I don't.

The cop-out would be to call this one a draw and say something about how we would have to work together. But I'm not going that route. This is a competition, and there has to be a winner and a loser. That's how we roll on this blog.

So assuming we each had to work alone, it comes down to who is more persevering -- the one who's more willing to stick it out. Inevitably, no matter how hard I concentrated, I would be distracted by some shiny object and would eventually wander off to watch an episode of The Flintstones while Terry kept working. In time, I'm sure, she would figure it out and find herself with the power to wipe out all of Wickliffe with the press of a button...assuming a spider didn't come along and chase her away.
ADVANTAGE: Terry (but just barely)


FINAL SCORE: I don't want to talk about it.