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12

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#12. My wife and I have been together for twelve years.

Actually, it’s closer to thirteen at this point, but who’s counting? (Well, okay, me, apparently. Hush up now.)

I’m not sure what else to tell you, except that the voodoo spell apparently hasn’t worn off, and that’s why she’s still with me. (Thank you, Haitian mail-order catalog!) We met way back in college, which seems like a lifetime ago. We’ve been together through five moves, eleven jobs, and several dozen adventures. We’ve been to New Orleans, San Francisco, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, New York City, Saint Louis, and Paris, France. And of course, Boston, Pittsburgh, and the seedy underbelly of humanity that is rural central Kentucky. And we’ve never had a fight.

Oh, we’ve had misunderstandings. And we’ve had annoyances, and the occasional snippiness. Certainly, I’ve been in the wrong, more than once. Forgetful, lazy, distracted, and inconsiderate, despite my best intentions. And she may have even been unreasonable, or hassled me undeservedly somewhere along the way. Once. Maybe twice, but I usually deserve what she dishes, and a whole lot more.

But in all this time, we’ve never had a fight. A knock-down, drag-out, hair-pulling ‘he said, she said’ kind of spat. One of those things that starts over something stupid and escalates into name-calling and finger-pointing and ‘boy, did your mother do a number on you‘-saying. (Though it’s true for both of us, of course. We just don’t bring it up very often.)

So, one of two things is going on. Either we’re beautifully matched, highly reasonable people who like to avoid confrontation and settle things rationally. The kind of folks who sit on their hotheaded feelings until they can find the root of the problem, and then discuss the issue logically and calmly, reaching a satisfactory conclusion without raising our voices or boiling over in misplaced anger. In other words, two well-adjusted, cool-tempered lovebirds who adore each other and take every opportunity to smooth the way for a rich, fulfilling life together. Romeo and Juliet without all the killing and crap.

Of course, we might be just really good at glossing over our little differences and annoyances, filing them away in the back of our minds until they become uncontrollable, seething balls of rage that will one day erupt with explosive violent force. And one day we’ll end up bellowing and shrieking at each other in the kitchen, or the bedroom, foaming at the mouth and chittering in high-pitched chimpanzee gibberish, gnashing our teeth and rending our clothes in pain and fury. Maybe we’ll shove and push and claw, using every word in the book and inventing many, many more in an insane blind rage built from twelve-plus years of forgetting to bring an ID, or leaving the toilet seat up. We’ll probably go at it for hours, in an angry inferno of pent-up frustration and guilt and fear, until we collapse in an exhausted heap on the floor, still bapping at each other’s cheeks with rubbery-armed hands. It’ll be unlike any fight ever had on the history of the planet. A lovers’ spat to end all others.

And then we’ll sleep it off, and never speak of it again. Until it happens again in another thirteen years, or fifteen, or however long these things take to bubble over.

So, either way, the next dozen years or so are gonna be pretty fucking cool. It’s just a matter of whether we have that big blip in the middle or not. My guess is ‘not’, but you’ll have to ask my wife what she thinks of the whole thing. She may have other ideas. Maybe I’ll just start leaving the toilet seat up, and get the damned thing over with. It might be worth it, just for the makeup sex. Woo hoo!