My Wife Just Left Me, Class. Here’s Your Math Worksheet

Robert Vetter
2 min readJan 3, 2022
Image credit: WalesOnline

If you make $35,000 a year, an average teacher’s salary, and you have to pay monthly alimony payments of $2,500 and rent of $400. How much money do you have left over to spend on yourself?

Using a right triangle, let side length a equal 9 city blocks and side length b equal 12 city blocks. If you are driving along side length c in a Honda your partner was supposed to help you make payments on, while they drive along side lengths a and b in a new Range Rover, how long would it take each of you to get to the other’s starting point? Assume that you have a 13 minute head start because your partner didn’t realize that you took your shared child out of her house because you forgot it wasn’t your custody weekend.

You’re dividing the average amount of shared assets of a single-child American couple. A child, a two-bedroom house, a car, and material possessions worth $17,000 are being divided. Research these prices and costs to calculate a way to divide these equally, assuming that they cannot be split in half. Assume as well that none if it matters because your ex wife’s lawyer dredged up some old YouTube prank videos you made that have now classified you as a “contemptuous and dangerous individual,” so you will be receiving nothing in the settlement. I mean math problem.

If a Rottweiler is running at you from 500 feet away from the left at 25 mph, and your ex wife’s friend Brenda is running at you from 300 yards away from the right at 10 mph, and assuming that the Rottweiler’s bite exerts 36.4 pounds of pressure, and Brenda holds you down, how much longer do you have left to live? Or at least suffer extensive nerve damage in your leg, forcing you to quit your adult soccer league, your only escape from what your life has become?

Given that it takes 8 gallons of human urine to heal 6 square inches of jellyfish sting (or so I thought), how many margaritas would you have to down on the beach on vacation to produce enough urine to heal your ex-wife’s jellyfish sting?

Bonus question: How much urine would be produced if you drank 6 margaritas? Enough to leave you peeing on yourself after she yells at you for “humiliating her on our anniversary trip” and “We’re done. Don’t bother coming home on the same plane with me. I’ll find someone at the resort who won’t pee on me.” How much urine would be running down your board shorts?

How do I do my taxes if I can’t claim my wife and child as dependents anymore?

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Robert Vetter

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Obnoxious. Writing seen in McSweeney’s, The Hard Times, Slackjaw, and more. Follow me on Substack: www.substack.com/robertvetter