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18

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#18. I will have been married for 3000 days on the eigteenth of August, 2004.

I’m always bugging my wife with arbitrary shit like this. The pace has slowed a bit now, since my memory is fading in my autumn years and the significant dates are a little further apart, but I still get her every once in a while. It used to be constant, though. Every week or so, back in college and grad school, I’d get her with:

Me: Hey, honey. Guess what today is?

Her: Oh, dear lord, not again.

Me: Yep, we got another anniversary. Guess what it is. Guess, guess, guess!

Her: All right. Let’s see… we’ve been dating for twenty months?

Me: Nope!

Her: Um… twenty-two months?

Me: Nope! Guess again.

Her: I don’t know… we’ve… been together as long as you were in school before I got here?

Me: Nope! That was last week, don’t you remember?

Her: Oh. Hmmm. Oh, I don’t know — just tell me.

Me: Are you suuuuure you don’t want to guess again?

Her: Yes. I’m sure.

Me: Are you paaaaah-sitive?

Her: Yes!

Me: Absolutely positive?

Her: Would. You. Just. Fricking. Tell. Me.

Me: Well, okay, but you’re gonna kick yourself!

Her (under her breath): Not if I can kick you first…

Me: What?

Her: Nothing, dear. I’m waiting.

Me: Okay — it’s the second anniversary since we’ve been together of the day that’s exactly between our birthdays! Yay!

Her: Um, yay. I guess. Do you make this shit up? What, do you work for Hallmark or something?

All right, so it’s not quite that bad. But only because it would take more than that for her to say ‘fricking‘ or ‘shit‘ to me. (Believe me, I know exactly what it takes, and this isn’t it.)

But apart from that, it’s just about right. I kept track of months together, and then months engaged, and months married. And the number of days together, and married, and all sorts of other stuff. Partly to show how romantic and thoughtful I could be, and partly to bug the piss out of her. (In a good way, though. Always in a good way.)

I even proposed to her on our fiftieth-month anniversary. Maybe someday I’ll tell you that whole story. But it’s long and complicated, with twists and turns and unnecessary complications. In the end, the only important thing happened just the way it was supposed to, and we agreed to get hitchified. Getting to that point turned out to be problematic. But that’s a story for another day.

Right now, I’ve got to find another anniversary of sorts to bug her with. August of next year is just too damned far away to be the next one. I’ll have to get my calendar out, and find some date-calculating program, and figure out something closer to surprise her with. Oh, our ‘thirteen years together’ anniversary is coming up soon, but she’ll be looking out for that one. I’ve got to hit her with a ‘square root of something’, or a ‘such-and-such thousand days’; some arbitrary thing that won’t be on her radar. But this time,

I won’t tell her what it is. If it takes all this effort to come up, then she should have to go through the same process, right? I’ll let her get out the calculator and convert to Roman numerals, and all that shit. Of course, I may have to let her figure it out, no matter what I ‘decide’. The way my mind works these days, I may forget what the hell anniversary it is by the time I tell her. Hey, at least she can’t get annoyed with me then. I’ll be in the dark just as much as her. I’ll just have to make something up that’s ridiculous enough to keep her from trying to follow the logic. Yeah, I think I can handle that.