Sunday, October 17, 2010

Anniversary


Well it's our 31st or 32nd anniversary this year. I suppose I could Google it to see which it is but I'm too lazy to bother. I used to remember by picturing the wedding matchbook in my head. Back in the day, each of the wedding place settings had a matchbook with the date embossed on the front. But after all these years the memory has blurred and faded just like my sanity.

We're past the crystal and silver anniversaries. I'm pretty sure this year is wood, so I'm going to give my wife some wood for our anniversary. Then again, I'm pretty sure it's the wood anniversary every year and I haven't been right yet. The next big anniversary is the 35th. The gift for that anniversary is Jade. After all these years I'm jaded enough for the both of us so I'm just going to give her myself, and some wood.





The wife's car at the time of wedding
Thirty-one or thirty-two years ago we were driving muscle cars with noxious gases from leaded gasoline spewing from the tailpipe. Girls burned their bras and wore skimpy halter tops and scandalous mini-skirts. There was no "lite beer" and restaurant cooks put mayonnaise and tons of salt on everything with their bare hands. Second hand smoke was taking a drag from your buddy's cigarette. Sexual discrimination was having one girl in the office who didn't get her ass slapped like all the others. How could things have possibly gone so far downhill since then?

My car at the time of the wedding
I remember the wedding reception like it was yesterday. I don't remember much about yesterday either. The honeymoon was more like a moneymoon. We spent a boatload of money for a fairly disastrous week in California. I'm sure I remember the first anniversary.....let me think................I remember it was exactly one year to the day of the wedding. I also remember the gift for that year was wood and I know it was either 31 or 32 years ago. That's all that comes to mind at the moment.

After 5 years, things are still good. After 10 years, it's getting a little stale. After 15 years, the Oscar Wilde quote comes to mind "Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same." The wife and I were actually very happy for 17 years, and then we met. 

When you're married this long you learn a lot of stuff. For instance, one of the keys to a good marriage is compromise. As in now and then the husband has to compromise his pride and self respect and purposely lose an argument to have any chance of getting some tail that night.

Of course communication is another key element to a successful marriage. The marriage gurus call it "open communication" but as a practical matter it's really more like "constant communication".  Back when we first got married, wives could only yackety-yak communicate with their husbands after work and on the weekends. With the advent of cell phone and texting technology they can now keep in touch 24/7 and impart critical messages like "how r u" and "i luv u 2" and "c u l8er" and "Where are you and when the hell are you coming home!?"

They say marriage is a two way street. It is, with you and the wife in separate cars headed toward each other at 90 mile per hour. Most of the time someone chickens out, but every once in while there's a huge head on crash. When they say it's is all about give and take, they mean it's like a tug of war. Marriage is hell and there are just a lot of flowery adages to make it sound nicer. When you both make it past the point of being too tired to keep up the battle of wills, you can actually relax, appreciate each other, have a good time and enjoy your "golden years" together. On the downside, I'm pretty sure the term golden years means that you're so old you're wearing Depends.


Enhanced by Zemanta

4 comments:

  1. You can Google your own wedding anniversary?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I thought you could Google anything. I just tried it and my wedding didn't come up but some other Grinham weddings did. They were from before 1940 so I guess it's from genealogy records but I was too lazy to read it. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. We have been married 44 years. Congratulations on your anniversary.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks JT. I really enjoy Monkey'n Around. I think because it's similar to mine in the sense I can tell the stories actually happened. I've put a link on my page to yours.

    ReplyDelete