Once in a while my wife takes a spa day. I offer to join her, but she always answers, “Then what’s the point?”

After hours of being smothered with attention — much like getting hit on by your Great Aunt Bertha — she’s totally unable to carry out some of her important wifely duties, such as warning me I can wear my lime-green sport shirt and my puce slacks, but not at the same time.

Also, she won’t let go of the remote control.

That’s when I step up and volunteer to cook dinner.

You would think that giving my wife the chance to crawl under the covers and dream of a teak serving tray straddling her belly as she nibbles finger sandwiches and pours tea from a Sterling silver teapot, would lull her into a state of relaxation that approximates an anesthetized sloth.

You also thought Great Aunt Bertha was a harmless old lady who smelled funny, until she clamped you in a bear hug.

My wife’s ideal chef isn’t Anthony Bourdain. It’s Dwight Eisenhower. Her model for meal preparation comes straight from his plans for D-Day. And, like D-Day, when we’re both in the kitchen there’s usually lots of yelling and splashing and the possibility that someone will jump off a cliff.

This is why my wife is not in bed. She has to oversee the assault.

“I know you hate it when I touch your knives,” I said, “so I promise to be careful.”

“I don’t hate it when you touch them, I hate it when you use them. Touch all you want as long as you wash your hands.”

Apparently, one of the side effects of a spa day is that my wife talks like Seth Rogen in a strip club.

Let’s face it. Knives are knives. They’re not like, say, power tools, where each one has an important purpose.

For example, take that knife with the serrated blade. You can use it for everything from separating frozen veggie burger patties to slicing through a coconut. Just like a reciprocating saw, which my wife won’t let me use in the kitchen any more.

I suspected the serrated blade would have a devastating effect on green beans.

“That’s a bread knife,” she said, as I pulled it out of the knife block. And then in the words of Big Pharma, for whom my wife was suddenly a spokesperson, she called such usage “off label.”

“But we don’t eat bread,” I pointed out. “Maybe we should donate it to Goodwill.”

In case you’re interested, spa day is over when your wife drops the remote control.

I took a bag of fresh green beans from the refrigerator.

“Let me show you how to slice those,” my wife said, reaching for a knife that looked like all the other knives in the block (except the serrated one which no one was allowed to use).

As far as I’m concerned, all I need to know about slicing vegetables is whether they need it. And there’s a simple answer. Slice them only when eating them whole could put your DNR directive into play.

“Otherwise, all you’re doing is making small things out of big things,” I said.

(FOR THE RECORD: I’m sure my wife is familiar with this concept. It’s what happens to our bank account when Saks has a sale.)

“To do that, you don’t need anything sharper than a knife from a Barbie kitchen play set and a thumb and forefinger, preferably your own.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s called American ingenuity. MacGyver could have prepared a state dinner with a ballpoint pen refill and duct tape.”

“Would that be the Richard Dean Anderson MacGyver or the Lucas Till MacGyver? Because the Lucas Till MacGyver has probably never seen a ballpoint pen refill.”

I suggested that she lie down and dream of using the bread knife to make finger sandwiches.

“My fault,” she said. “You want to do something nice for me and I’m standing in your way. Cook dinner any way you want.”

“Just to clarify, you’re going to leave me alone in the kitchen?”

“You do the cooking. I’ll hang the pictures we had framed last week.”

I offered to get her the hammer from my tool box.

“That’s okay. The handle on your cordless drill will do nicely.”

While my wife prepared dinner, I hung pictures until I ran out of ballpoint pen refills.