About a month ago, I made a BIG HUGE GIGANTIC IDIOTIC mistake. I had just surveyed the occupants of our driveway and made note of the two gas-guzzling SUVs and the gas-guzzling over-sized ugly truck and muttered the syllables "new car."

Mr. Husband's man brain snapped out of that Wife Filter setting, defying the laws of nature as he actually heard the words that came out of my mouth. That rarely occurs. In fact, I'm still intrigued by the fact that his hearing is suddenly just dandy when I say words that he WANTS to hear. I could stand inches from his ear and yell, "PUT YOUR SHOES AWAY, PLEASE!" and he wouldn't hear a single syllable.

Anyway, Mr. Husband has spent weeks researching and exploring and generally driving me crazy as he found one "perfect" vehicle after another. I mostly ignored him as his Wife Filter kept ignoring the part where I insisted that the vehicle be cheap and get better gas mileage than anything we owned.

Then yesterday I made a new BIG HUGE GIGANTIC IDIOTIC mistake--I let Mr. Husband drive through some car lots. That action alone is all it takes for him to come home with something. We've bought at least six vehicles together over the past 14 years, and each time it's the same. He sees a vehicle, he buys the vehicle. There are no steps in between those two actions. In fact, his vehicle negotiations go a little like this:

Mr. Husband: "How much is that car I'm going to buy, even if you tell me it's over-priced?"

Salesguy (it's always a guy): "It's twice the Kelly Blue Book value, but I'll give you a deal and whack $100 off the price."

Mr. Husband: "Will you take double that?"

Salesguy: "Um, sure."

Mr. Husband: "Great! It's a deal!"

He will vehemently deny that this is how it all goes down, but he will not deny that since I took over the job as Official Price Negotiator in our house, we have paid significantly less for things. Recently, in fact, he called me a loony toon for thinking I would be able to buy the gas-guzzling over-sized truck for less than a third of it's Kelly Blue Book value. I bid my super-low price anyway and HELLO! it's in our driveway.

So, we set foot on a dealership parking lot and I knew at that very moment that we would be coming home with a car. I instantly made my traditional conversion to Clueless Female. Can I just say, the salesguy fell for it hook, line, and sinker? He totally bought into my "You talk to him, honey" and "I know I'll be the one that drives it, but I trust you're opinion, so you go ahead and do the test drive and tell me if I'll like it," spiel. (I'm not entirely sure that Mr. Husband doesn't fall for it, too. If that's the case, Mr. Husband, sorry, but yes, I have been using your manliness to get us a better deal. You can thank me with a new Coach watch.)

I know the guy fell for it because when it came time to go over the amount they wanted for the car and how much they were willing to give us for our trade-in, it looked a little like this:

You could have built the Great Wall of Pittsburgh through the chasm on the table. The salesguy tilted that offer sheet in such a way that only Mr. Husband could possibly see it, then proceeded to yammer on with his back directly to me. To be honest, I'm not sure that Mr. Husband saw the smoke coming out of my ears. If he did, he may very well have mistook it as me sending smoke signals for him to shut his trap. Either way, the men at the table were both taken aback when I ripped the offer sheet off the table and scrawled a counter-offer on it. I was trying to play the role of Clueless Female, but this Clueless Female has more than a little input when it comes to car negotiations.

As the salesguy slowly realized that nobody was spending any money unless I said so, he dove into typical salesguy crap and tried the lines about having to keep his boss happy and not having the kind of wiggle room on the price that I was requesting. I revved up to Bitchy Wife mode and told him I didn't really care. Meet our price, or we were leaving.

There was the usual hemming and hawing, but in the end I managed to get the price down to an acceptable level and we drove away in a new-to-us 2003 Audi A4. The salesguy was kind enough to apologize, admitting that in sales school they taught him to never ignore the wife, and that he had clearly committed that sin. He may have even thanked me for sparing his life.

Next time you may not be so lucky, Mr. Clueless Salesguy.