10 Things You Don't Know About Women: Patricia Heaton

"We love it when you try."

1. Despite our protests, we are secretly amazed and even a little bit jealous of how comfortable you are with your bodies. The kick you get from farting, burping, and scratching is impressive.

2. The sports obsession is not a problem. Go to the sports bar for Monday Night Football. Take the whole weekend to golf. Please. Expand poker night to Tuesdays and Thursdays. It just gives us more time to run the world in your absence. We do this regardless, but it's nice not to have you breathing down our necks.

3. We know about the three grand in parking tickets. We just haven't said anything. Yet.

4. We love it when you try.

5. Whenever you start to tell that story, the hilarious one that shows how great you really are, we have a place we go to in our minds. They have blender drinks there and cute cabana boys. Did I say "cute"? I meant "mute."

6. Please don't wear jewelry. Of any kind. Ever. Just smell good and change your underwear once in a while. You are wearing underwear, aren't you?

7. We know you look back fondly on your days with Kathy Psycho-Slut. She's now fifty, wearing the same miniskirt and tube top that she wore twenty years ago, and she can't quite keep her lipstick inside the lines. By the way, she called. Knock yourself out.

8. Occasionally, we find your cluelessness attractive. There's something about your blind enthusiasm for the Sharper Image, your ability to pick all the wrong people as friends, and your devotion to reorganizing the CD collection you never listen to that is endearing the same way that having a slightly mentally ill brother is.

9. We use your razor because it's there.

10. If the house were burning down and we could take only one thing with us, it wouldn't be the red Manolo Blahniks. It would be you. But you'd have to take the shoes.

Patricia Heaton is a star of Everybody Loves Raymond and the author of Motherhood & Hollywood: How to Get a Job Like Mine.