When your wife asks if you're going to wear that shirt, meaning the one you're already wearing, the correct answer is "Of course not, this one is just holding the place for the one I want to change into, which is which one, exactly?"

It's on page 32 of the handbook, next to the supplement on "Which Shoes Go Best With the Dress She's Wearing Tonight: None in the Closet Really Match, But Check Out That New Pair at Neiman's, They're Perfect."

But sometimes one forgets the rules or, feeling particularly frisky, overtly disobeys them. This, gentlemen - especially when it comes to dressing yourself - is usually a bad idea.

All of this came to mind Saturday in a downtown Bismarck church.

At a beautiful wedding attended by scores of well-dressed well-wishers, you did your best to hide the blotch of mystery crud on the shirt you shouldn't have been wearing.

It had been your Saturday to work, and the day's assignment was to visit the carnival at the Missouri River Festival. Knowing the carnival began at noon and the wedding at 2, you thought it best Saturday morning to wear the nice shirt for the wedding to work. There would be no time to get home to change, you reasoned. You did not think about bringing an extra shirt. For some reason, your brain doesn't work that way.

But your wife's does.

She mentioned it, knowing you are prone to attracting mystery crud, but you dismissed her recommendation. You could be careful.

It probably happened on the Zipper, but it could have been the Tilt-a-Whirl. Somewhere at the carnival, anyway, the shirt found crud. After meeting Jae Utke, of Hebron, you really hoped your shirt wasn't dirty because of the Zipper.

"I love rides," she said, looking up at the Zipper, "but that's the only one that's ever made me sick."

Utke had in tow some members of the youth group from the United Church of Christ. They were pretty pumped about the carnival, despite the cool temperatures and sprinkling rain.

"This place is cool," Josh Crowley, 11, from Bismarck, said. "The hang-glider ride is the best, because it goes so high."

There are a lot of cool rides at the carnival, as Josh noted, and the barkers in the midway are pretty comical, too. One of them, Brandon, talked you into spending five bucks to throw baseballs at beer bottles. A little girl broke two the day before, he said, so it can't be that hard. You broke a couple, but not in succession, so there was no prize. Still, it was cathartic.

And then there are the funnel cakes.

Applied science and doughy goodness merge into a tasty meteorological morsel. This is the start of funnel cake season. Next comes Art in the Park, and then there's Folkfest.

(Reach reporter Tony Spilde at 250-8260 or tony.spilde@;bismarcktribune.com.)