Sleeping Your Way to a New Career. Not the Way You Are Thinking

If we could absorb education and work experience simply by sleeping with someone, what career swaps could we make?

Just because you slept with someone named Stormy, it does not make you a weatherman.” Joy Beher, on The View Kona Lowell

I loved this joke. It is true: I am no fan of the sitting president. I would still think it was funny if it were about someone else. Someone, not the president.

Let’s say Al Gore was known for sleeping with Stormy. Let’s also say he had a similar faux pas with a weather map. Maybe during an interview with CBS This Morning. The joke would still be hilarious. To me, anyway.

What if it weren’t a joke? What if it were true? What if sleeping with someone named Stormy made you a very accurate weatherman?

Let’s expand it. What if you could acquire skill sets simply by sleeping with someone?

I was once married to an electrical engineer. Over ten years of sleeping with the guy would have qualified me to work as an expert in fiber optics, right?

If that were true, imagine how expert I would be after 20 years with my current husband! He is a software designer.

Some of his work is used as a plugin on one of the Smithsonian web sites. If you want to look at Smithsonian fossils in 3D on the Internet, thank my husband.

I remember him designing the software that they use. He was using 3D models of human teeth. To our kids’ fascination, they were colored green.

My husband explained the green made them easily visible for manipulation. Didn’t matter. We thought it was weird.

I wouldn’t do something as mundane as teeth or ancient fossils with my software design knowledge. No way. I would use his 30+ years of software design experience to create something related to cats.

I don’t know what, but there would be something. Hey, if I had a brilliant idea right now, I’d give it to him. Gotta pad that retirement account.

My husband is also a runner. Until age made his shoulder and knees complain, he was a tennis player, too. My imagination balks at my ever becoming a runner or a decent tennis player. That would never work.

My future son-in-law was once a competitive bull rider. Under this scenario, my daughter would now know how to stay on a bull. For a while, anyway.

I looked it up: the rider needs to stay on the bull for a full eight seconds with only their riding hand touching the bull. It used to be ten seconds. That tells me that even with the training, not enough riders were staying on.

Easy peasy. They’ve been together for a few years. Surely, she’d be able to hang in there for eight seconds. Yes, I know my daughter is going to call me to explain why this is as ridiculous a notion as my becoming a runner.

My mother was a bookkeeper for most of her working life. Her husband worked for a cable company and ran large, complex machinery. Under these rules, they would each be qualified to do the other’s job.

Knowing each of them, it seems less ridiculous for my mother to run the machines than for him to sit in an office all day. In reality, I am sure they were each relieved they didn’t have to do the other’s job.

My father came back from WWII and decided not to continue his college studies. He became a grocer and stuck with it until retirement. His wife was a legal secretary.

I’m enjoying imagining that role reversal. Imagine Dela Street and Perry Mason switched places. Except Perry Mason was really a grocer. Okay, that comparison is falling apart. You get it, though, right?

Some comparisons fall flat. The two married teachers wouldn’t need to trade places. The manager of a deli, married to the manager of a restaurant, wouldn’t have too much trouble adapting.

Back in the 80s, Christy Brinkley married Billy Joel. That would be an interesting swap.

What about the CEO of a Fortune 500 company with a trophy wife? That would be an awesome career trade. Probably more fun to watch than to live.

What do you think? Any swaps you would particularly like to fantasize about?

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