How much housework do you do?

I was sitting in my office the other day when the phone rang. A person I had never met before wanted to hire me. When I asked this person how they happened to call me, they said, “My friend said you’re the best divorce lawyer around.”

Now, I am not necessarily the best divorce lawyer around, but I do flatter myself as pretty good at what I do. I suspect other divorce lawyers in town, like Dennis Korman or Jeff Westermann or Gail Nouska get called “the best” as well, maybe even more frequently than I do. The fact is, any lawyer who practices law is probably pretty good at what they do, just like most of us are pretty good at our jobs. Sure, there are a few clinkers, and now and then we all make mistakes that show our flaws but, overall, most of us are pretty competent.

But it got me thinking. Who would ever rate themselves in the bottom half of competency in any field? Mathematically, we’re all average. How would I rate myself? I know that one: I’d rank myself in the top half. But that means there must be lawyers in the bottom half — whom would I put in that category? No one I know.

I asked my wife: How much of the housework, overall, do you do in our home? Her answer should have surprised me. She works full-time, and is in Minneapolis twice a week, and sometimes travels to Washington, D.C. for meetings. I do most of the grocery shopping and nearly all the cooking and dishwashing, most of the yardwork (poorly, I admit) and more. I estimate that I do about 70 percent of all the housework in our house.

She said she does about 70 percent of the housework.

That means, if my arithmetic is correct, that between the two of us, we get 140 percent of all the work done.

Try this little experiment in your home. Ask your spouse.

Or, try it at work: I bet your employees rank you higher than your competitors do. But even your competitors probably won’t rank you in the bottom half. This isn’t Lake Wobegon — we can’t all be above average. But that’s certainly how we rank ourselves.

Now, don’t be cruel. Have you ever seen America’s Got Talent or any other similar show? Most of the contestants have more talent that I could ever muster. But once in a while, they show an act that is hideous: a singer who can’t carry a tune; a comedian whose jokes are just not funny; or a dancer that moves more like a duck than a swan. It’s fascinating to watch them, especially when the “talent” simply doesn’t realize how bad they actually are. But I think those acts are put into the show for cruel pleasure — most of the acts that get on TV have, at least, some talent. Maybe they are not ready for nationwide superstardom, but if you saw some of those singers in a local talent show or singing karaoke at a local event, you’d think they were pretty good. You may even rank them in the “top half.”

As for me, the next time someone tells me “I’m the best,” I will simply nod, agree and compliment them on their discretion. There’s nothing wrong with being, along with everyone else I know, in the top half.

Pete Radosevich is the publisher of the Pine Knot News community newspaper and an attorney in Esko who hosts the talk show Harry’s Gang on CAT-7. Reach him at [email protected].