I always know that I'm in trouble when my wife uses my first and last name- MICHAEL AUN! And when the water gets to the boiling level, she goes with all three names- MICHAEL ANTHONY AUN!

Like all men who are over-married and under prepared for the issue of "getting caught" doing anything wrong, I either fight or flee. It's the only options we have. Let's face it, you know you're in trouble, and now you have to decide whether you want to lose the dividends and the investment.

My repair man was doing some work in my digs recently and he parked his truck at the end of the driveway. I thought I could navigate around it okay and I did fine until I hit the gas grill in my garage. No problem, I'll just back up, I surmised. That was the second mistake because as I backed up, I did additional damage to the door of the grill cabinet.

I'm not smart enough to own up to such a problem on the front end. You/d think that 61 years of screw-ups would have conditioned me to take the hit, admit guilt, show remorse and move on. No… not me, I'm stupid! I decided to use the deny/lie approach, as if this ever worked before.

I noticed that the drape that covers the grill hid the damage very nicely, so I went to Kenny, my repair dude, and basically threatened him. "If my wife finds out about this, I'm taking it out of what I owe you!" Lots of good that did.

Before the sun hit the deck that night, I got the ole three name shout from the garage- MICHAEL ANTHONY AUN!!! If Christine had gone with the basic, two-name scream, I would have owned up to the problem, taken my medicine and begged forgiveness. Three names… well, that calls for denial and blame as an approach, as if that ever worked before.

The use of all three names is clearly a tip-off to those people who aren't total morons. I'm reminded of that bumper sticker that clearly says it all: "Why do we do the things that we do when we know the things that we know?" Answer, because I'm male and I'm stupid!

It's been said that denial keeps addicts addicted. Rationalizing, minimizing and justifying are the methods us addicts use to cover our bases. Occasionally we go with cockiness, projecting, blaming and intellectualizing. To be honest, plain old humor probably works better than anything.

The stuff that hasn't worked is lying, threatening, analyzing, arguing, shouting, withdrawing, smiling or plain silence.

The social scientists tell us that stage one of this process is "denial" of a problem. Stage two involves "blame and helplessness." Stage three goes to the roots of admitting this is a fixable problem. Stage four is making a choice to fix the problem. Stage five is resolving the issue. We addicts would rather just lie and blame the repair dude for parking in the way…. blah, blah, blah.

To my credit, I wasn't drinking and driving when I damaged the door on my gas grill (of course… now I'm negotiating for some pity-points and some favorable forgiveness), like that's ever worked before.

Why not just admit it, stupid? My new book, “It’s the Customer, Stupid!” is a good read. You'd think I'd take my own advice and admit I have a problem and move to a solution. But nooooooo… that would make way too much sense!

Since I graduated from the "bigger hammer school," i.e. when all else fails, hit it with a bigger hammer, I'm trying to sort all this out in my pea-sized brain. I've concluded this: it's just a damn metal door. Take a hammer and pound it out and be done with it! Like that's ever worked before either.