Living With Your Equal in HumorLet’s just get it out in the open – I am married to an awesome guy :). Steve is a package deal: he’s smart, kind, compassionate, patient, funny, handsome, and a man of integrity – he does the right thing even if it’s unpopular or inconvenient; a rare find these days. He’s 49 years old and looks 35 – at 43 I have more gray hair and facial lines than he does, hee hee. Most importantly he has a deep love for God and it shows even in the most trivial details of his everyday living. In an age where Christianity regularly gets beaten up for weak explanations (misinformation) and bad applications (hypocrisy), Steve stands head and shoulders above those who talk the talk – he walks the walk without regard for the fleeting opinions of others and is an example everyday of how to place the best interests of others at least on the same line – if not above – his own desires.
We’ve been married for nearly 10 years, and truth be told it often seems like 10 days. Someone once said that the tone of your day is often set by the mood you’re in when you wake up in the morning. We often joke that if our house had a FBI wiretap, it would be hard to distinguish between the adults and children when listening in – we go to bed giggling and laughing and wake up exactly the same way, sometimes right where we left off the night before. The “bodily functions” theme is a real workhorse for humor, especially in the dark where everything is even funnier.
A hidden fear I have is that we’ll get to be 85 years old, in the “sunset years” so to speak, and I’ll wake up one day thinking “Wait! It’s not enough; it’s not been long enough!! We just got married…well, 50 years ago…”
Comedy makes such a regular appearance in our marriage it’s enabled us to weather a fair share of hardship and still keep a positive attitude. We don’t take ourselves too seriously and we’re able to take the most ordinary situations and turn them into our own private circus.
A prime example is the following: I was traveling to our corporate headquarters a few weeks ago. I had landed at the airport in NH and was in the McDonald’s (eeek!) drive-thru to get some lunch before heading to the office. The drive-thru employee was on the talk-box and Steve was in my other ear on my cell phone as I ordered a hamburger, salad, and yogurt. As soon as my darling husband heard me say “hamburger” he launched into 20 different variations of the word hamburger – right out of the scene in The Pink Panther, where Steve Martin is trying to say “hamburger” without the inane French accent. Here’s a link to the clip if you want to see something really funny:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=iUCDhvbQFmU
“I would like to buy a hem-beh-geah…”
“I would like to buy a HEM-bah-gah…”
“I would like to buy a hem-BEU-geuh...”
And Steve was LOUD – I mean I could hold the phone away from my ear and still hear him.
“Hem-beah-GEAH!!”
It was the ultimate test in trying to hold an adult conversation and not go off the deep end in a giggling fit. By the time I got to the cashier window, I was practically crying and having a hard time just steering the car down the drive-thru lane.
I laughed the entire way to the office – food coming out my nose – what a scene to nearby drivers :).
Another typical example is from last year when I was traveling internationally, and one of my trips took me to Bangkok, Thailand; Steve accompanied me for 2 weeks. I had an apartment that was actually a Marriott hotel, and while it was a beautiful property, they had a 25 meter pool on the top floor that was to die for. I would have the whole thing to myself at 6am and it was a slice of heaven.
The hotel also had a security system with cameras everywhere, including the elevators, and also one positioned behind the front desk aimed directly at guests who were checking in or needed assistance from the staff.
We discovered the front desk camera one evening while channel surfing. Thailand is a wonderful mix of traditional and Western culture, and they have a great satellite channel lineup. I could catch up on all my favorite episodes of Law & Order and CSI, and Steve was in heaven because they also broadcast all the History Channel variants; I wondered if he would leave the couch only to answer the call of nature.
The front desk camera was a channel all its own, meaning you could watch this channel and basically see anyone standing at the front desk and also see into the front lobby – it was as if you were behind the camera itself.
It took about 2 seconds for The Dare to be uttered: “Dare ya to go down there and do something while on camera…”
Suh-wheeeet!!!!
Remarkably he went first. I saw him on the TV, being filmed on the front desk camera. He said something to the front desk employee, presumably requesting the DVD catalog (our apartment had a DVD player and a wide selection of first-run movies available for checkout from the front desk).
The clerk disappeared and Steve looked straight into the camera and began half duck-walking/half doing the “Vogue” pose around the lobby, stopping just in time as the clerk reappeared.
When he got back to the room, I was rolling off the couch in laughter, holding my stomach. I could hear him practically stumbling down the hall, he was laughing so hard.
Things escalated from there…
I went downstairs, also making the same request of the front desk – may I see the movie catalog, pretty please?
No sooner did the clerk disappear into the back room, I launched into an exaggerated act of picking my nose, and when the clerk reappeared with the catalog I impulsively shook his hand – with the same hand I’d just been using to do a roto-rooter :).
Steve was howling when I got back to our room. It beat anything on TV that night - and for weeks after.
The funniest part was that this is a big hotel – hundreds of rooms – who knew how many people were watching us…those crazy “stoo-PEED” Americans…
I pray all marriages have as much fun as we do.
We’ve been married for nearly 10 years, and truth be told it often seems like 10 days. Someone once said that the tone of your day is often set by the mood you’re in when you wake up in the morning. We often joke that if our house had a FBI wiretap, it would be hard to distinguish between the adults and children when listening in – we go to bed giggling and laughing and wake up exactly the same way, sometimes right where we left off the night before. The “bodily functions” theme is a real workhorse for humor, especially in the dark where everything is even funnier.
A hidden fear I have is that we’ll get to be 85 years old, in the “sunset years” so to speak, and I’ll wake up one day thinking “Wait! It’s not enough; it’s not been long enough!! We just got married…well, 50 years ago…”
Comedy makes such a regular appearance in our marriage it’s enabled us to weather a fair share of hardship and still keep a positive attitude. We don’t take ourselves too seriously and we’re able to take the most ordinary situations and turn them into our own private circus.
A prime example is the following: I was traveling to our corporate headquarters a few weeks ago. I had landed at the airport in NH and was in the McDonald’s (eeek!) drive-thru to get some lunch before heading to the office. The drive-thru employee was on the talk-box and Steve was in my other ear on my cell phone as I ordered a hamburger, salad, and yogurt. As soon as my darling husband heard me say “hamburger” he launched into 20 different variations of the word hamburger – right out of the scene in The Pink Panther, where Steve Martin is trying to say “hamburger” without the inane French accent. Here’s a link to the clip if you want to see something really funny:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=iUCDhvbQFmU
“I would like to buy a hem-beh-geah…”
“I would like to buy a HEM-bah-gah…”
“I would like to buy a hem-BEU-geuh...”
And Steve was LOUD – I mean I could hold the phone away from my ear and still hear him.
“Hem-beah-GEAH!!”
It was the ultimate test in trying to hold an adult conversation and not go off the deep end in a giggling fit. By the time I got to the cashier window, I was practically crying and having a hard time just steering the car down the drive-thru lane.
I laughed the entire way to the office – food coming out my nose – what a scene to nearby drivers :).
Another typical example is from last year when I was traveling internationally, and one of my trips took me to Bangkok, Thailand; Steve accompanied me for 2 weeks. I had an apartment that was actually a Marriott hotel, and while it was a beautiful property, they had a 25 meter pool on the top floor that was to die for. I would have the whole thing to myself at 6am and it was a slice of heaven.
The hotel also had a security system with cameras everywhere, including the elevators, and also one positioned behind the front desk aimed directly at guests who were checking in or needed assistance from the staff.
We discovered the front desk camera one evening while channel surfing. Thailand is a wonderful mix of traditional and Western culture, and they have a great satellite channel lineup. I could catch up on all my favorite episodes of Law & Order and CSI, and Steve was in heaven because they also broadcast all the History Channel variants; I wondered if he would leave the couch only to answer the call of nature.
The front desk camera was a channel all its own, meaning you could watch this channel and basically see anyone standing at the front desk and also see into the front lobby – it was as if you were behind the camera itself.
It took about 2 seconds for The Dare to be uttered: “Dare ya to go down there and do something while on camera…”
Suh-wheeeet!!!!
Remarkably he went first. I saw him on the TV, being filmed on the front desk camera. He said something to the front desk employee, presumably requesting the DVD catalog (our apartment had a DVD player and a wide selection of first-run movies available for checkout from the front desk).
The clerk disappeared and Steve looked straight into the camera and began half duck-walking/half doing the “Vogue” pose around the lobby, stopping just in time as the clerk reappeared.
When he got back to the room, I was rolling off the couch in laughter, holding my stomach. I could hear him practically stumbling down the hall, he was laughing so hard.
Things escalated from there…
I went downstairs, also making the same request of the front desk – may I see the movie catalog, pretty please?
No sooner did the clerk disappear into the back room, I launched into an exaggerated act of picking my nose, and when the clerk reappeared with the catalog I impulsively shook his hand – with the same hand I’d just been using to do a roto-rooter :).
Steve was howling when I got back to our room. It beat anything on TV that night - and for weeks after.
The funniest part was that this is a big hotel – hundreds of rooms – who knew how many people were watching us…those crazy “stoo-PEED” Americans…
I pray all marriages have as much fun as we do.
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