Marion says to me, “You gotta hear this one.”

“Hear what?” I ask.

She’s already laughing and blubbering so much she can barely read it to me. I know it’s not nice of me to reveal her tendency to blubber when she laughs, but I am a stickler for telling it like it is.

“This guy says”. . . more blubbering . . . “he says, I married my wife for her personality.”

Marion is bending over to her knees trying to catch her breath. I’m waiting cautiously. I roll my eyes because I know her sense of humor. But laughter is contagious, and I can’t help but give her a sheepish smile.

“What?” I’m pleading.

She’s wheezing by now. “I married my wife for her personality, but I didn’t realize that it came in a variety pack” . . . more wheezing . . . the glasses come off . . . her eyes are watering . . . “one for each day of the week.”

By now she’s lost it completely. She’s leaning back into the couch holding her stomach. She finally manages to say what she has said to me on a number of occasions, “Remember, you prayed for me.”

I did. And the strange thing is that her personality suits me just fine. She has a kind streak a mile long and wide. At the same time, she doesn’t take any crapola and speaks her mind. She organizes everything and gets more done in a day than most. She is sassy, yet she is thoughtful.

I wouldn’t say that she has a variety pack of different personalities. It’s more like she has a multifaceted persona. I guess we’re both still discovering things about each other. After almost two years we’re still peeling back the layers.

This joke started a conversation about our personalities, how we are alike and how we are different. If you’d like to consume three or four spare hours of your time, I highly recommend this type of conversation with your significant other.

Just be prepared.

“I’m an ESTJ,” she says.

I stare at her for a moment as if she has just spoken Russian to me. She notices the befuddled look in my eyes.

“We took the Meyers-Briggs personality test at work years ago. I’m an ESTJ.”

When I worked at Callaway over 30 years ago, they put all of the managers through a personality test. We sat in one of the big ballrooms at the conference center. A professional-looking lady in a dress and heels spoke to us about management styles and how our different personalities can either help or hurt our effectiveness.

This was about as much fun as prepping for a colonoscopy. I didn’t really care to be evaluated, but the room was air conditioned, and lunch was free.

At the end of the day, we all took our #2 pencils and filled in the little circles in response to a ridiculous barrage of weird questions. When the results were calculated, my personality was designated a “blue” type. Personalities in this test went by color, not letters. I can’t remember what all the colors indicated, but I’m pretty sure that I am hopelessly average.

“So,” I ask Marion, “what exactly is an ESTJ?”

She disappears into her office space and comes back with the Meyers-Briggs book, the very book she was given at work decades ago. Hint: ESTJs keep everything and know exactly where to find it.

I was never great at the psychology classes I took in school. But apparently there are people who dive deep into this stuff and come up with systems capable of labeling people who are orderly, and people who are slobs; people who have wild imaginations, and people who get excited in accounting class; people who are free spirited, and people who have a conniption fit if we get off schedule.

Marion reads off to me the profile of an ESTJ.

First of all, she is an extrovert (E). Extroverts are outgoing, action-oriented, and extremely social people. In her particular case, she loves to cook ribs for a crowd, and she volunteers for 847 projects each year. Whenever I have a problem, she immediately offers a solution, and she will post on FB the entire story of our lives.

The (S) is for sensing. I take this to mean that a person who scores as an ES wants sensible solutions and is ready to show the world how things get done. Anything abstract is confusing and a waste of time. When Marion and I work in the shop together, I will tell her what I’m doing, and she will ask me to draw a picture.

“Remember, I’m a visual learner,” she says.

Next comes the (T) for thinking. Thinking types analyze everything. They are confident in what is right, and they often wonder why everyone else chooses to be wrong. Life is “matter of fact,” and they have little patience for touchy-feely conversations.

As Marion is reading this to me, we are both in stitches.

Lastly, the (J) comes into play. ESTJs judge life by its structure. Each day is organized. No decision is made without consulting the plan. Keep in mind that Marion has a 24-month calendar with her at all times. Her dates are color coded. She consults its pages every day. Next to her Bible, her calendar is her guide.

I took the book from her. “I wonder what I am?”

“Why don’t you take the test?” She is challenging me.

Like a fool, I agree. She takes a sheet of paper and draws out by hand a grading chart, which to me looks like a sequencing guide for a lunar launch from NASA.

I am reading the questions out loud while she is marking my answers on the chart. I only have two options with each question, a or b. Some of the questions make no sense to me, because an “either/or” answer does not seem sufficient.

For example, they want to know if I prefer to make decisions based on (a)facts or (b)circumstances. And I want to know what the facts of the circumstances are before I make a decision.

Then, there are several occasions when I say that (a) is my answer, and Marion does a double take at me with her eyebrows raised.

“Should I have said (b)?”

We got through all 80 questions, and it turns out that I’m an ENFJ. For the record, this means that Marion and I are alike on either end of the spectrum and complete opposites in the middle.

An ENFJ personality likes people. He considers the facts but makes decisions based on the big picture. He values compassion. He is understanding. And although he has a calendar, he doesn’t always keep it up to date.

That’s pretty much me. Mr. Personality.

How does this work out in real life?

Well, our camping trips are really well planned. My kitchen is more organized than ever. We misfire on our communications occasionally. We both enjoy having people over for supper. And we laugh a lot. At each other.

But mostly, she reminds me to put stuff on my calendar.