People work from home for all sorts of reasons. Some like wearing their pajamas to work. Others wish to avoid office politics.

I have a more personal reason. It means I’m the only person home when the new Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue arrives.

As a wife and mother of two teenage sons, this is important to me. It enables me to fulfill one of woman’s noblest callings: the censorship of her family’s reading materials.

I’ve got my system down pat. When the issue arrives, I review its contents immediately. Then, Exacto knife in hand, I carefully remove any pages I find objectionable.

To determine which pages stay and which ones go, I rely on prevailing Community Standards. In other words, would anyone I know be caught dead wearing a given suit down at the community pool? A bikini made entirely of guitar picks? Not likely. A single, strategically placed iPod? I don’t think so.

When I’m finished, I take the remaining five- or six-page issue and do what any good wife and mother would do. I hide it.

Days pass. Eventually, one of the Bufe males casually broaches the subject.

“Hey, did the new Sports Illustrated come?” they’ll ask.

“Hmmm,” I’ll respond thoughtfully. “Not yet.”

And just to be clear — it’s not a lie if you are trying to save someone’s soul.

As proof, I have here no less an authority than the 1905 edition of The Catholic Girl’s Guide which, on page 421, clearly states, “The first duty of every Christian wife is to scrupulously shun everything likely to prove dangerous to purity, including worldly periodicals, sensational newspapers and salacious literature, including, but not limited to the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.”

So, yes, I’m basically just following church doctrine. Even so, after about the tenth time someone asks, I start to feel guilty.

“Hey guys, the new swimsuit issue is out!” I’ll finally announce one day. “But, I’m telling you, its popularity is sure waning. It’s down to eight pages this year. And there’s not even a cover!”

You know someday they’ll thank me.

It just won’t be this year. Starting in early February, I stood guard as usual each day, waiting for the mailman. But day after day, no magazine came. Finally last week, it hit me. We were victims of Swimsuit Issue Theft.

Turns out, we are not alone. Sports Illustrated couldn’t give me an exact figure. “But every year I get calls from the same guys,” a magazine spokeswoman told me. “And they all swear their neighbors took their copies.”

Their ‘neighbors?’

“Look, I’m no expert,” I told her. “But I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest these guys are all married. Just not to women as open-minded as some of us.”