I firmly believe we should never stop trying to better ourselves. This wonderful world can offer new and exciting experiences regardless of how much we think we know.

I recently had a chance to put this belief into action. My wife wanted to paint the living room since we had a kid-free house for a few days. Even though I am not allowed to paint – that’s a long story which goes back a number of years – I did offer to help prepare things for the project.

So I moved furniture and carried the area rug upstairs. I made a Sunday morning trip to the hardware store and wandered around the aisles until we found everything on the list. I even spotted something we needed on a shelf before Maria did. That’s husband-of-the-year type stuff right there.

When we had the room all prepared and the supplies purchased, I thought I would be excused from the project. While I did have plenty of things I could accomplish on my own, particularly napping, I did want to help as much as possible.

So Maria told me I could help clean the walls. Against my better judgment, I got excited. I could actually claim that I did something helpful on a painting project.

We had purchased some special cleaning solution – that’s the stuff I found at the store – to wipe down the walls, but I had a chance to help even before we got down to that dirty work.

She let me use the Swiffer.

At first, I didn’t quite know what to do. She wanted me to use the contraption to clean the walls. The whole concept blew my mind. I almost needed to go lie down to process this information, but knew that would just get me in all kinds of trouble.

So I attacked the job with the gusto I needed to mark another check box on my bucket list. I went up and down, side to side. I Swiffered like a champion.

Sidebar: Is that the proper verb? Does one Swiffer? Swuff? Swaff? I think we need to tackle this linguistic conundrum.

Anyway, I relished this opportunity to make a real difference in the project. As I worked my way around the room, dirt magically appeared on the little rag that you attach to the doo-hickey at the end of the thingamajig. I can neither confirm nor deny I had anything to do with dirt on the walls.

Second sidebar: Can you believe that we only found two pieces of cereal on the floor when we moved all the furniture?

I think I did a pretty good job with the Swiffer. Not only did I manage to clean up the walls a little, but I found lots of ways to work this particular task into many double-entendres. Isn’t that the whole point of allowing a man to help around the house? Doesn’t it all come down to the jokes?

The painting project continues so I can only offer moral support. But when everything is said and done, I know people will look at our living room and say, “Who Swaffed these walls?”