That's Fine, Dear

I guess that it is kind of a sad commentary on our modern society that, nowadays, the tenth anniversary is considered the diamond anniversary. Not the sixtieth or the seventy-fifth, but the tenth. Traditionally, the tenth anniversary was the aluminum or tin anniversary, but neither of those are exactly very eye-poppingly appealing. Aluminum compounds are prone to simultaneously combusting upon exposure to air; tin compounds smell like boiled ass and can kill you as soon as look at you.

As you may have surmised, today is my tenth wedding anniversary. To celebrate, I'm working all day, up until about ten o'clock tonight; my wife is staying home with a sick child. Or, at least, a child who thinks he is sick. And who thought that all night long last night, at five minute increments.

At one point, my wife had enough, told me that she was leaving, and I said "That's fine, dear." There's a certain point--some time around 2:55 am, I believe--where you could tell me that you're going to stomp on my testicles and grind them into a fine paste, smear it on a cracker, and feed it to a dog, and I'd probably respond with "What? Oh, that's fine dear."

In the early part of our marriage, she plucked my eyebrows once doing this. Exhausted from having sold my soul to science, i.e. working in a graduate lab, I fell back upon the soft, cushiony delight of the pillows on our bed. My eyes fluttered shut as I relaxed and relished in the velvety, purple paradise of our bed pillows.

"Your eyebrows are a bit ragged," she pointed out as the warm and muzzy embrace of an illicit afternoon nap was pulling me in. "Do you want me to pluck them?"

Smacking my lips with a bemused smile upon my lips, I offered up my typical sleepy time response, "That's fine, dear."

Two seconds later, fire raced across my brow, ripping me from my sleep. Blood gushed from the open wound left in the wake of her dastardly, betweezered fingers, my vital essence spurting in ruby gouts from my brow.

"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?" I calmly and pleasantly offered. "WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU DO SUCH A FUCKING THING???"

"Well," she responded, with a genteel sort of aplomb, the tweezers still in her fingers, a hair with seven inches of my flesh dangling from the end of it still gripped in the jaws of the metallic device, "you said that I could."

You would think that, after having been flayed in such a manner, I would have learned my lesson. But, sadly, comedically, no.

"I'm going to go sleep in his bed," she announced last night in the wee-est of the wee hours of the morning. "He's all yours."

"That's fine, dear," I offered, smacking my lips and burying my head further into the pillows (they are no longer purple or velvety...and I must say that, I am a little saddened by this in retrospect). For the most part, it was fine, because at three o'clock in the morning, when even God is asleep, exhaustion has set in so readily and so deeply that even a six year old who thinks he has polio is ready to sleep. Certainly, he still squirms and flops about and you'd swear that he was seventeen feet tall and twenty-three feet wide, with arms and legs to match those Brobdingnagian proportions.

Unfortunately, somewhere around five o'clock, he is curious about the relativistic nature of time, and so he wakes you and starts asking if it's morning yet.

"Daddy," he offers, with his sweet little voice. You pull yourself from your reverie enough to acknowledge that someone is speaking to you, and that you can't simply respond with "That's fine, Dear." "Is it morning yet?" The question has been completed.

"Well, technically, yes," you offer, because it is after midnight and it is morning, by definition. "But, there's still plenty of time to sleep." You close your eyes, hoping that you will once again be cavorting naked with various high school crushes and girlfriends--you know, how you remember them and not how they appear on Facebook.

Satisfied, he rolls over...only to be curious again five to fifteen minutes later. When the alarm finally goes off, you can safely assure him that it's morning.

"I'm going to go tell mom good morning!" he proclaims, bounding out of bed, temporarily forgetting that he's sick. Remembering that he's supposed to be sick, he crawls into bed with her and curls up and whines. Really whines. The kind of whine that makes you contemplate throwing some crackers on the floor, locking the doors and driving for Montana.

"Well, I'm ready to go," I say at the bedside, after finishing my morning ablutions and rituals. "I'll see you this evening. Have a good day."

There's a pause, and then she responds with, "That's fine, dear."

And you know your marriage has come full circle.

So, happy anniversary to my wife, the Comely and Buxom and Sleep-Deprived Bouddica.


That's right, baby: that's all yours.

I'll be home later with a tin can full of beans wrapped in aluminum foil. I mean, that's the traditional gift for the tenth anniversary, right?