35

  "A man and a woman. A woman and a man.
   Some can. Some can't.  And some can."  ~ Roger Miller

Two weeks ago, my wife and I went to Birmingham, Alabama, for our nephew's wedding.

Our nephew, who was born at Kennestone Hospital, like the rest of us, went to Birmingham-Southern College and met a young lady from New Jersey. They fell in love, and they decided to get married.

For any of you that had young people getting married recently, you know what havoc COVID-19 played with the proceedings. I know young people that had to put off their wedding for several months until it became comfortable to bring Mee-maw and Pee-paw to the ceremony.

Well, my nephew's wedding went on without a hitch. Except, of course, we had to drive through a Category 12 tornado to get to Birmingham.

From Atlanta, Birmingham has always been a reasonably easy drive. It is not a reasonably easy drive when the weather is described as "Armageddon" by AccuWeather Laser Doppler Radar.

The sky was pitch black,  and the rain was coming down in buckets. But, and this is important, from my crack geography skills, I ascertained that the tornadoes (yes, there was more than one) were both north of  Interstate 20 and south of Interstate 20.

So we were able to scoot through the tornado conditions and make it to the hotel without being taken up into a funnel cloud and landing in the Land of Oz. ("Listen, fella, there's only room for one person without a brain.")

To me, this trip is an almost perfect analogy about marriage.

My wife and I celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary this week.  In my college years, I never thought I'd be married 35 minutes, much less 35 years.  I had a unique ability to repel women.

They all had this checklist of qualities: looks, brains, muscles, height,  and money.  I had none of those qualities. However, I was short and had pimples, so I had that going for me.

I had a checklist too.  I insisted that all of my applicants have breasts.

I have friends that had a type of girl they liked.  I did not. To quote Hank Williams, Jr., I liked them tall, I liked them small, and I liked them all.

Well, Lori and I married, and I think we've had a really good marriage.

I don't know how we did it. We just did.

 I don't claim to be a marriage expert.  I am an expert on how to be married to Lori.

I give young men several pieces of advice.

One, the days of this wallflower wife that bows and scrapes to everything the husband says has been over for years.  You can't push her around, and you can't bully her.  It won't work.

You have to figure out how to persuade her without being a total jerk. And that's different for each woman. So good luck, guys!

Two, and this is important, make sure you are on the same page regarding money.  You have to work together on this.  Sometimes the tightwad marries the spendthrift, and that causes a lot of stress.

Being on the same page is probably the glue that holds together many marriages.   You have to decide on so many things in marriages it saves a lot of time if the husband and wife are going in the same direction.

This means you have to agree on things like how many kids to have, homeschooling, who gets to drive the nice car, which church to go to, and what TV show to watch.

One question young couples never think about but will follow them throughout their marriage:  where do you want to eat tonight?

I would probably eat at the same two restaurants every day of my life. My wife likes a little variety.  However, my wife won't eat Chinese food in the summer. I've been working on that for 35 years.

My last bit of advice is about SEX. 

The best quote I've heard on sex in marriage is that men are like light bulbs while women are like ovens.

Men are socialized to look at "girly magazines" for the articles on stereo equipment. If there just happens to be a picture of an airbrushed model buck naked, so be it.

We read "letters" from "real" men that begin with "I never thought it would happen to me" and ends with, "She said I was her most skilled lover, and that included the Florida State football team."

While women watch Hallmark Channel movies that deal with the topics like "Christmas," "Love," and "Love At Christmas."

 Lastly, men do not make love to anyone else besides your wife.  They (and I mean all women, including Hillary Clinton) find this offensive.

No marriage will be without its tornadoes.  

Eleven years ago, it was my brother's death. Then it was my wife's breast cancer. Then her mother died. Then our son graduated from college and married his girlfriend, and we became empty-nesters.

Last year, my wife was diagnosed with AFIB and had a heart ablation. Meanwhile, my blood pressure went out of control, and I was given medicine that made me fall asleep while channel surfing.  

But, we've come through that, and we are a lot wiser than we started.

Now, if we could just figure out where we are going to eat tonight.