I finally got through with this Bob’s Matrimonial
Wisdom For Modern Youth piece! I
started it before Katie Kasch married her Keith in October, and then I wished
I’d finished it when Dusty Rumley wed his Jacey in May. (The solemnities for which, in case you
missed it, were performed by none other than he with whose flesh I became one
in September 1987.) So this is my gift
to brides and grooms. Laugh at me if
you will! It’s embarrassing that the
only wisdom I’ve gathered in 25 years of marriage is, “Don’t fight about hot
dog buns,” but I do think it makes a nicer presentation than, “Stay away from
automatic weapons,” and I can’t afford to give cash …
True Love and Hot Dog Buns:
Bob’s Little Acre June Wedding Wisdom Special
By Robin Ford Wallace
So, young people,
you are to become, respectively, a bride and a groom, 25 years after I shambled
down the aisle myself, and you come in your youth and innocence asking for
wisdom?
Let me just set
aside my knitting. I expected you to
come, my dears, and I wrote down my thoughts.
Where are my spectacles? Ahem.
RUN! RUN LIKE BUNNIES AND DON’T STOP FOR COPS OR
FARM ANIMALS!
Ha ha. I must have my little joke. It is true marriage is more difficult than
it looks but I am sure you will be very happy.
My spouse and I have, after all, enjoyed virtually uninterrupted
connubial harmony, except for the time I cooked all afternoon and then he broke
the light above the table with his rocklike head and subsequently spent the
entire dinner nervously examining my beautiful food for glass shards,
mau-mauing the guests out of any vestige of appetite until I drop-kicked the
casserole over the porch railings and we screamed at each other until the
guests left and the police came –
Well, what did you
expect? The fact that I am older than
you does not mean I am wiser, or knit.
It merely offers clues to the girth of our respective thighs and is a
rather good indicator of the comparative noisiness of our digestions. It is one of life’s ironies that older
people suffer disproportionately from intestinal explosions when children are
so much likelier to find them amusing.
And the fact that
I have been married a long time is no evidence I am good at it. Is anybody?
Believe no one who says so!
People lie, and are lied to. This
has been the basis of my horticultural advice and I hereby extend it to
matrimony. A woman I knew was shocked
to discover five years into her fairytale marriage that her Prince Charming had
never stopped nor in fact slowed down feeling up other feet for glass slippers,
telling everyone they had an open marriage and she was in any case gay.
Which brings us to
complacency. She had always seemed so
smug and self-satisfied as he frisked that people assumed it was true, and did
not tell her. It is a cautionary tale
against overconfidence, though upon further reflection I suppose husbands of
jealous wives abscond for Arizona on Harleys with Waffle House waitresses on
the back in roughly the same numbers as those of the trusting, an occurrence so
common as to explain the spotty service at these places, which are sadly
understaffed. Still, my dears, crowing
about one’s perfect marriage is tantamount to tattooing a bullseye on one’s
butt, and mooning the NRA.
And
let us not leave this story without touching on same-sex marriage. What could anyone possibly have against
it? Most of my own matrimonial problems
have stemmed from marrying outside my gender.
Once we saw
“crawfish balls” on a Cajun menu, which I translated as “croquettes,” but my
husband said thoughtfully, “Don’t you know those have gotta be tiny.” The male mind simply operates differently
from the female! I read this blurb on a
box of men’s hair dye: “Covers the
gray. Not all of it, just some of
it.” Why would men purchase a product
that makes such humble claims? The
women’s kind proclaims (do not inquire how I know): “100 percent coverage of stubborn gray.” Then I realized: It is how they wash dishes.
“Not all, just some,” is the male creed.
The breezes that have riffled the petals of my own marital bower have been more dishwashing- than Waffle-House-waitress-related, not burning issues but minor irritations amplified by the constant and pitiless proximity of the conjugal state:
The breezes that have riffled the petals of my own marital bower have been more dishwashing- than Waffle-House-waitress-related, not burning issues but minor irritations amplified by the constant and pitiless proximity of the conjugal state:
He eats the diet
lunches I make to last me all week (“Those were delicious but there wasn’t much
to them, so I had to eat five”); I assault him with my Alzheimer’s-proof memory
(“Do you remember what you said when I cut my hair in 1985?)”; we have to drive
to work together and he makes me late (“Put your shoes on, you son of a …”).
Then
there’s the lost-item phenomenon. What
begins, “Darling, have you seen my __?” ripens into, “Where’s my __?” and
ultimately becomes: “What did you do
with my __, woman?”
We fight about
laundry, illegal immigration, box fans and the pronunciation of the word
“syrup.” But I am happy to tell you we
no longer fight about hot dog buns.
We
did. Why? My dears, hot dog buns can destroy a marriage in more ways than I
have room to tell you, but consider first they come in bags of eight;
fat-girl-friendly turkey dogs also in eights; but manly 100-percent-beef dogs
only in packs of 10. So the situation
is already a ticking time bomb, but suppose, miraculously, one ends the week
with four dogs and four buns for Saturday lunch, only to find one’s spouse squandering
a bun at breakfast on scrambled eggs?
Anyway, however
this particular fight started, one day we were locked in mortal combat when we
simultaneously realized we were both shrieking passionately: “Hot dog buns! Hot dog buns!” It was
funny enough to stop us fighting.
It became a habit,
and now when we catch ourselves fighting about something that doesn’t matter,
one of us shouts HOT DOG BUNS and we stop.
Mostly.
And that is my
advice to you, my darlings: not to avoid fighting, because you will. Everybody does. Romeo and Juliet would have, if they’d lived (“Mama always told
me them Montagues was trash.”).
But when you
realize the argument is going nowhere, take a breath, rear back, and shout:
WAFFLE HOUSE
WAITRESS!
Or, you know, HOT
DOG BUNS; whichever the case may be.
END
