Come this July, The Wife and I will celebrate our 26th wedding anniversary, and many people ask me for the secret to such a long relationship. For all the menfolk out there, to have a happy marriage you need to follow three simple rules – two of which I broke last week.
So, what could be so important, so dire, to cause me to break the happy marriage rules? Perhaps the two most dreaded “P” words ever to be placed in the same sentence – two words that should never be used together.
Pimples and pictures.
Confused why those words caused me to break all but one of the “stay happily married” rules? Read on, Dear Reader, and perhaps you’ll agree with me. It had to be done. There was no other choice. And, if you ask me, it was totally justified.
To be honest, the start of this story didn’t occur last weekend. For that, we must travel back some sixty years to a childhood bathroom mirror early one morning on an old familiar street not so far away called Flamingo.
Mom really loved all our school pictures. How do I know? No matter what the year or which one of us five kids she was talking to, she always said the same thing when opening the large school envelope. “These are the best ever! I simply love them.” Then she’d go through and buy wallet-sized ones for all our relatives and a few large ones for the walls and photo albums. She said the same thing about my horrific third grade picture. And my memory of that picture has followed me to this very day.
The morning started by Mom waking us up and telling us to wash our faces, get dressed in the clothes laid out for picture day, and come to the kitchen for breakfast. I wish I could say it was while I was washing my face I noticed the huge pimple on the tip of my nose, but that wouldn’t be true. Twin Brother Mark, Big Brother James, and Older Brother Richard had already pointed it out, and they were still making mean comments while I peered into the mirror at my reflection and the biggest pimple ever on the tip of its nose.
At breakfast, my pleas to avoid participating in Picture Day didn’t work. Instead, Mom assured me, “If you don’t like the picture, they can touch it up. It’ll all be fine.”
I didn’t. They tried. And it wasn’t.
So how did a nose pimple and school pictures from Flamingo follow me through the years? Simple. We took class and individual pictures last fall at the school where I work. Mine were not great. Not bad, but not great. Then, last week I got two big surprises.
The first surprise: we were going to have Picture Day once again. Nowadays, elementary schools have fall and spring picture days. Yes, I had to get my picture taken again.
The second surprise came the morning of Picture Day. Getting ready to shave, I looked in the mirror on the wall and that third grader from Flamingo Street was staring back at me. Sitting right on the tip of my nose was the biggest pimple I’d ever seen. Softly scrubbing didn’t make it go away. A small, round, tan Band-Aid didn’t make it go away. Dejected, I got dressed and was about to leave the house when I had a brilliant idea.
The brilliant idea was not so brilliant after all.
I had to take everything out of The Wife’s purse before finally finding what I needed – makeup. All I had to do was use the little brush thingy, dab a dot on the end of my nose and magically, no more pimple! Except, the color was just a little bit off. Now, not only did I have a pimple on the end of my nose, but it also looked like a giant ghost nose. In a panic, I shoved everything back into her purse then opened her makeup drawer. There’s a bunch of stuff in there so certainly I could find something to cover up the pimple ghost nose. After half an hour of trying everything, I finally gave up, washed my face, and went to work. Then, while driving I had an idea.
Hide!
When the class picture was taken, I’d do what I did back in the third grade – hide behind the biggest kid in class. Back then it was Bubba Hanks. Unfortunately, even the tallest kindergartener is a whole lot smaller than Yours Truly. There was no hiding from that fact. After walking into the gym and seeing all the picture sets, I gave up all hope of hiding. This picture was going to be worse that the one back in third grade. The only thing I could hope for would be a divine intervention.
Divine intervention happened!
The class picture I was so fearful of turned out to be the best one I’ve ever been a part of! All thanks to the God of Thunder. It turns out that spring pictures are also silly pictures. Each student and staff member could pick from tubs full of super-sized glasses, hats, boas and beads. When my turn came around, I picked Thor’s giant hammer. It was the perfect size to hide a giant nose pimple.
So, what are the three rules for a happy marriage?
One: don’t go into The Wife’s purse.
Two: don’t go into The Wife’s makeup drawer.
I learned a life lesson on Spring Picture Day. Most of what I worry about in this life isn’t worth worrying about. Despite all our missteps along the way, things seem to turn out all right in the end.
There is one exception: Rushing The Wife through Target. Now that’s something to worry about. And that, Dear Reader, is rule number three to a happy marriage.
