Four Things My Wife Hates started on a warm day in Milledgeville, Georgia, in May in 1995 when an afternoon thunderstorm blew up into a tornado, knocked down the Krystal’s fast food sign and Jean Klemm and Rob Peecher began what would become a lifelong journey together.
A year later they were married and had the first of their three sons, Harrison. His brothers came along a few years later, Nathan in 2000 and Robert in 2001.
As the years progressed, Rob and Jean discovered that the best way to cope with being the parents of sons was through humor, and it was from this parenting philosophy that Rob began writing weekly humor columns, first at The Eatonton Messenger, where he was editor, and later at The Oconee Leader, the newspaper he founded in his hometown in 2006.
The columns were always popular among readers, especially people who were themselves parents, because they could relate.
Once, a woman came into the office to get back copies of the paper. She was going through a divorce and intended to use the columns to demonstrate to the judge that – despite her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s assertion – all kids can get out of control.
After years of encouragement from the folks who enjoyed reading his columns, in 2013, Rob decided to publish a collection of some of his favorites from among the columns.
At that point, Four Things My Wife Hates took on a new life. The volume of collected columns is titled “Four Things My Wife Hates about Mornings and Other Collected Stories,” the title coming from one of the columns contained within the book.
In 2015, Rob and Jean sold the newspaper they started in 2006 and that led to this website and the series of “Four Things My Wife Hates” books. This website contains an assortment of old columns and new columns (Rob continues to write the column each week for the new owners of The Oconee Leader and periodically writes columns just for this website or the next book).
The Four Things My Wife Hates, obviously, are her three sons and her husband.
She doesn’t really hate them, of course, but that’s the joke. Rob, Harrison, Nathan and Robert – whatever the experience – harass and stress her to the point that they are the four things she hates about mornings, laundry, vacations, soccer, teen drivers and whatever else.
So it is that the Four Things My Wife Hates are also the four things she loves.
These columns are just for fun – the funny side of parenting boys into young men. The columns are all true (or true enough), but as Rob often points out, there is some exaggeration. For instance, Jean’s eyes have never actually turned red, nor has she ever actually had steam come from her ears like a teapot. But she’s been close.
