Mike

Ball

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July 21, 2008

Another Anniversary for Me and My Best Friend

My wife and I celebrated our wedding anniversary on Saturday. We’ve been married 33 years – that’s 12,045 days. Actually, 12,053, if I’ve managed to calculate the leap years right.

This means that my wife has had to listen to me singing the first verse (the only part I know) of Bob Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain” something like 72,318 times, a feat of endurance that some experts feel ranks right up there with surviving the Spanish Inquisition or a Neil Diamond concert. Personally, I think I at least partially broke her spirit sometime in the mid-’80s.

From time to time in these pages I’ve shared some of the secrets of my marital success, most recently in a culturally sensitive column titled, “How to Talk to Your Wife.” A couple of years ago, I even documented my attempt to get my wife to sign a pre-nuptial agreement, 31 years after the fact, so I could protect the assets I brought into the marriage (a guitar and a 1968 VW micro bus). From time to time in the future, you can count on me to share additional deep insights.

But the real secret is very simple: Marry your best friend.

OK, don’t bother writing to tell me something like, “But Mike, I’m a straight guy, and my best friend’s name is Chuck.” I’m not talking about the person you most enjoy hanging out with when you’re drinking beer and pretending that there is even the remotest possibility that the hot young blonde in the string bikini might be even remotely interested in either one of you.

I’m talking about the person with whom you are willing to share everything, from all your cash, to a dessert at the Big Boy when you’re just a little low on all that cash, to the only “spork” they threw in the bag with your bucket of chicken and mashed potatoes. The person who will gently nudge you awake just before you slide out of your chair and onto the floor at the oboe recital. The person with whom you actually enjoy going to oboe recitals.

We celebrated our 33rd anniversary by buying some take-out sushi, a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers (because we all know how much I covet fresh flowers!), then enjoying a sushi and wine picnic in our living room while we watched the Detroit Tigers on TV.

We were living large!

We could have spent a bunch of money on champagne and filet mignon in a romantic restaurant. Some day, if we ever happen to come by a bunch of money, we might just try that. But probably not, because take-out sushi, wine and the Detroit Tigers in our living room are among the things we like best.

Since the day we got married, me wearing an open-collared shirt and a sport coat and she wearing a flower-patterned peasant dress, my wife and I have pretty much marched to our own drummer. We have generally had things to talk about, and yet we have always been comfortable with the idea that sometimes one or the other of us just might not feel like talking.

It’s not that our marriage lacks romance. It’s just that our version of romance has never exactly been the kind of stuff that you would expect to see in a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. We almost never spontaneously break into Gershwin songs and tap dancing routines.

No, the basis of our romance is that we both dearly love hard-checking forwards in Red Wings uniforms, and Ernie Harwell’s voice describing a guy from St. Clair Shores catching a foul ball (we miss you, Ernie!), and going to the Ann Arbor Art Fair, and skipping the Ann Arbor Art Fair, and sitting on the boat and watching the sun go down, and raising emotionally-challenged cats, and grilling a package of whatever happens to be on sale at Polly’s Market, and eating take-out sushi . . .

And each other.

Copyright © 2008, Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.