1. When backing into an RV spot: If your backing signals are a family joke, and your husband made it clear many years ago that he preferred being directed by your 10-year-old son, then he deserves to be on his own now that the children are all grown up and he's stuck with just you. However, if people are watching, be sure to get out and direct him as competently as possible so that he appears to be a successful RVer with a good wife. Try to remember to stand in a position where he can see you in his mirror. He may get irritated if he can't see your signals, and you want to avoid irritating him.
2. When setting up the RV: It is very important to let your husband be in charge of things like electricity, water, and sewage. If you do too much, other RVers around you will think your husband is inept. It is acceptable to appear helpful with simple things like placing the chocks and pads under the jack.
3. Speaking of sewage: ladies don't. It is best to be oblivious to the workings of this system in your RV. Just let your husband do his manly duties to take care of things with nasty names like "black water".
4. Occasionally, make a silly mistake and let him figure out how to fix it. For example, it's your job to turn on the air conditioning in hot weather as soon as he plugs in the electricity. If the RV doesn't cool off, and you eventually notice it's 88 degrees inside and 85 outside, go out where he is sitting in the shade with his dog and express your concern about the air conditioner. When he comes in and sees that the switch is on Heat instead of Air, he will instantly be a hero for miraculously fixing the air conditioner by simply switching it to Air. A great RV wife would admit she must have been careless or forgot to put her glasses on and apologize for making such a grievous error. One who is still learning to be a great RV wife might accuse her husband of bumping the switch on his way to the bedroom to count his 21 shirts. (It helps if you have a great RV husband who thinks this is one of the most hilarious things ever.)
5. When your husband has a new and amazing toy, such as an Incredible touch screen cell phone, and he believes you can bypass your map retardation by learning the Navigate system and other mysterious computer things it can do, resign yourself to learning as best you can. The first day, you can blame your mistakes and ineptitude on the fact that you don't have any reading glasses. After that, when you have glasses in the pickup, it's harder to find excuses for mess ups (although there is often a glare on the screen). After a week when you say, "Now how do you get off this keypad again?" and he exclaims, "I can't believe you still don't know how to do that!", try not to let your feelings get hurt. He is a man, and men understand tech things better than they understand women who don't get tech things.
6. Make lots of admiring comments about his dog, even if you secretly wonder about a big chocolate lab who is content to sleep away a 12-hour day in the pickup while his owners wander down the road with an ever changing destination. Is that normal? If you must have a dog, that is the kind to have.
7. Be very careful not to look behind you and make any loud exclamations about the dog as you are driving down the road. Just because the dog's head is in the styrofoam container of leftover picnic food that your husband did not put the lid on does not mean that you should gasp and say, "No, Zeek!" Your husband may slam on the brakes and pull over, alarmed that perhaps Zeek, his perfect dog, is doing something very unacceptable such as pooping. When he finds out the real reason for your outcry and believes it to be unworthy of such vociferation, he may become slightly irritated with you. Let me repeat, you should try to avoid doing things that irritate your husband. (Unless they are really fun for you.)
8. If your husband should ever mistakenly close the slideout over a hose bib that should have first been lowered, causing the fender to bend outward at an alarming angle, let him know you still respect him completely. Because he is a highly skilled and competent RV guy, within the hour he will straighten out the bend so well that no one but the most inquisitive fault finder will even notice the slight indentation where it bent. Compliment him on his repair job, and do not tell anyone about this embarrassing mishap. Let him tell whom he wishes (and he will tell), because his image is not important to him.
9. If his cell phone startles you from a sound sleep at 4:11 am with the text message notification blaring "Pay attention when I'm talkin' to you boy" in a horrible cartoon character voice, and the message is a Mariners baseball score (delayed due to poor cell reception at the RV park), try to calm your racing heart and quietly go back to sleep, keeping your bitter thoughts to yourself. There will be plenty of time the next day to encourage him to find a more pleasing notification sound. Just be thankful he normally turns it off at night.
10. And of course, the most important thing is to have a great RV husband who knows both how to read a map and work a Navigate program, can figure out and fix things that go wrong, and best of all, who treats you like a princess and laughs with you at all the minor annoyances and major inconveniences that come your way as you travel down the road (even if you are the one who causes them). Thank the Lord for the good health and love he has given you to enjoy life on the road as well as at home.
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