Marriage

The Bachelor Weekend That Wasn’t

My wife changed her plans. I absorbed the impact. We had a productive day. That’s the whole story, really, but my Friday night deserves a brief moment of acknowledgment before Saturday erases it entirely.

Judy was here all weekend. This is relevant context.

Friday was fine. Television. Whataburger. A chicken sandwich that came back wrong—spicy mayonnaise instead of mustard—which I ate anyway, because the store wouldn’t take it back and I saw an opportunity. Between a coupon and a free hamburger, we walked out with three sandwiches and paid for one. My wife looked at me like I’d lost my mind for voluntarily eating the spicy mayo. The mustard sandwich showed up again at Sunday lunch. My heroic attempt to stop for additional groceries was denied. We went to bed with no tornadoes. A win by any measure.

Saturday was when the list appeared.

Now, to be clear about my planning philosophy: I don’t make many plans. When social obligations lift, I mourn the quiet for approximately four minutes, then I check the weather, consider a walk, maybe get a haircut. I have a termite inspection this week and I’m genuinely looking forward to it. This isn’t laziness—it’s strategy. Life is chaotic. Commitments made too far in advance are promises to a version of yourself who had no idea what Thursday was going to bring. So I stay available. We have a chest freezer, two refrigerators, and enough food to host unexpected dinner guests of nearly any denomination. We are prepared for spontaneity.

Saturday did not reward this philosophy.

Judy had mentioned setting up her remote desk. New monitor, some accessories. I mentally budgeted about twenty minutes of light assistance before returning to my very important online chess obligations. I figured this was manageable. I was adorable.

“Can I take a walk now?” I asked, innocently.

What followed was a full domestic reorganization. Disassembly. Furniture migration. A king-sized bed that needed to travel one street over to my son’s house. The journey of breaking down two beds begins with the linens, then the mattresses, then the screws and bolts, and then the moment where you can’t find the specific bit for the five-inch screws that hold the whole frame together.

Except this time, I could find it.

A year and a half ago, I tore down this same bed, lost that bit, drove to Home Depot, drove to Lowe’s, and eventually bought an entire screw package just to get the replacement bit. This time, I had placed it exactly where a logical person would store it: with the other tools, in the bit bank, where screwdriver bits live with their people. My wife looked at it and said, “That’s a pretty handy tool.” I smiled and said nothing, because explaining the full backstory would have required admitting how long it took me to figure out where screwdriver bits go.

The bed itself was stamped “Manufactured in 2002.” It came with us from Ohio. It survived several room shuffles in Texas before landing in Oklahoma. It used to be a bunk bed. At a certain age, none of us should be responsible for supporting someone above us, and I think it’s relieved to be done with that phase.

The king-sized mattress went into the van at an angle, half of it resting on the bike rack hanging out the back. Two of its four handles had been destroyed in previous moves—no explanation, just the natural attrition of a mattress living its life. We scooted it tactically along the sidewalk to the front door. Our next-door neighbors are both police officers, one for OKC and one for Moore. Nobody was cited. The biggest concern once we arrived was where to place the bed in my son’s future master bedroom. Centered on the three windows looked right. His fiancée didn’t disagree, which is the international signal for “this is acceptable for now.”

Back home, we finished setting up our daughter’s room—the one she uses less than 10% of the year—which is “her room” with an asterisk. It’s also my wife’s remote office, my other daughter’s Zoom studio, and occasionally a nap zone for my granddaughter while the rest of us swirl around her. A simple room trying to live three lives. Fits the family brand.

The flexibility isn’t really for me. It’s so I can be there when my son needs help moving a bed. When my daughter needs a hand. When my wife has a list and a Saturday and a vision for where the monitor should go.

We got a lot done. None of it was on my list, which didn’t really exist in the first place.

I’m going to become a part-time babysitter soon. I won’t be filling that schedule with hard appointments. My Kindle will be nearby. I’ll be available. Some people would look at that and see a boring life. I look at it and see a front-row seat to the lives of people I had some small part in building. If I can nudge them occasionally as adults, that’s a bonus.

Legacy. I’m going with legacy.

She Stayed Home Anyway

Friday night was supposed to be a bachelor night. My son skipped his camping trip to celebrate his fiancée’s new doctorate. My wife was supposed to be at a women’s church retreat somewhere in southeastern Oklahoma, surrounded by people who say “I’ll pray for them” and “Bless their hearts” every few minutes, and mean it. A room full of actual personalities.

She canceled. She stayed home with me.

I have spent considerable time assembling a list of plausible explanations.

The weather. Earlier this week, an EF4 tornado hit north of OKC. The retreat was a couple of hours away. Most of those women have lived here their whole lives, which means they’d have known exactly what to do. Judy would have been in better hands with them than with her husband, who has graduated from watching tornado coverage on TV to calling it “fieldwork.”

The new job. She finished her second week and told me, “If I knew it was going to be that hard, I would have asked for more money.” The graceful glide into semi-retirement she’d been planning has been postponed indefinitely. A full weekend of singing and fellowship might have felt less like rest and more like a different kind of exhausting.

The wedding. Their photographer canceled this week — a death in the family, and the memorial service landed on my son’s wedding day. The caterer they’d lined up is closing at the end of June. Judy found out about both of these things Friday morning, and before the day was out, she had a list of approximately a dozen photographers to call and filed the situation under problems I can fix. This is her natural environment. When I eavesdrop on her talking to our daughter, I hear a woman who genuinely believes she can solve things, and who is usually right about that. A retreat would have taken her off the field during crunch time.

The house. Between saxophone recitals, a doctoral defense, and family dinners, deep cleaning has been hard to come by. Our son is still living here until the wedding, which means every room is in use, and Judy hasn’t been able to close a door behind her and declare it “clean” the way she likes. Saturday presented an opportunity. I recognize this possibility.

Me. Her first comment was, “You were certainly a factor.” She said it warmly, which is the charitable interpretation, and I’m going with that. I’ll acknowledge I’ve been crankier than usual this week — by evening, I’m running on low-battery notifications, more tired and capable of the sharp word instead of the kind one. I start most mornings reasonably enough, but the day works on me. Talking less or answering in vague generalities is usually the better move. The last remaining bits of common sense do what they can.

She’s always had a heart for a project. Apparently, I still qualify.

The truth is, I don’t fully know why she stayed. My best guess is it was the wedding stuff, and that I was a small contributing factor, and that she weighed a weekend of fellowship against the specific pull of problems she could actually do something about — and the problems won.

I am the guy who takes out the trash and reminds her we need to get to the bank Saturday morning. I am the gardener who calls the perennial company to get replacement plants sent, then makes sure they’re in the ground before we can go out for dinner. Our emotional lanes are pretty well established. The kids don’t bring their big life questions to me. They bring them to Judy, who has the patience to sit with the answers longer than I do. I give responses that are either too vague or too sharp. Not nearly as helpful.

So if she tells herself she stayed home partly for me, I’m not going to argue. I know she has a full world of people who make her feel needed. If I’m somewhere in that number, I’ll take it.

Whether it is with a toilet brush or a phone call, Judy will continue her mission to save the world. Mine is just to make sure she can.

The Nicest (and Meanest) Man She Ever Married

This morning, I asked my wife if she wanted a coffee refill. When she said yes, I pointed to the carafe, paused just long enough to enjoy myself, and then grabbed her cup and filled it.

“You spoil me,” she said with total sincerity. “You are the nicest.”

I knew better. “Yes,” I replied, “but I’m also the meanest man you ever married.”

She didn’t miss a beat. In that sweet tone of hers, she said, “I feel like I take advantage of you when you always fill my cup for me. I genuinely thank you for that.”

Since the caffeine hadn’t hit yet and I didn’t feel worthy of the praise, I had to do some soul searching. How does this woman continue to love a snarky, often cranky man who is constantly trying to deposit enough “I care for you’s” into the emotional bank before noon — before the day’s inevitable influences take hold?

In just over two weeks, we start our 36th year of marriage. As I look at the calendar, I realize I need to up my game just to keep pace with her. She is genuinely excited about everything on the horizon. Our future daughter-in-law’s wedding shower? She’s hosting it and is actually looking forward to entertaining. Her new job has come with more Day One problems than expected, yet she’s ready for the challenge. Our Europe trip this summer? Every excursion is planned, and she is anxious to spend two weeks straight with me. Based on that last point alone, she should probably be committed to an institution.

I am well aware of my flaws. I snap when my schedule gets turned upside down. I am prone to funking — my shorthand for being in a funk — where I become either disagreeable or retreat into stony silence for no apparent reason. When I’m tired, I’m nitpicky. I’m often someone I wouldn’t want to spend time with.

Yet somehow I’m a better person than the man who stood at the altar all those years ago.

Judy’s ability to look long has either rewarded her or cursed her — I’m genuinely not sure which. I believe I’ve incrementally improved, but it didn’t happen in the first five years. It may have only happened in the last five. In the chaos of shared life, a slightly nicer version of me has slowly taken possession of my faculties more often than the other guy. Maybe my tone is a bit softer. Maybe watching my kids live their lives and spending a few hours a week with my granddaughter has acted as a lubricant for the nasties, letting the good ideas flow while keeping the barely tolerable ones from doing too much damage.

She tells me every time we travel: “I like you more when we travel than when we are around the house.” I get it. At home, I’m weighed down by all the life things I feel responsible for. When we’re cruising, she handles the plan, and I just show up.

I travel well.

Maybe that’s why she puts up with me the other 50 weeks of the year.

Things My Wife Won’t Buy (Until She Decides They Were Her Idea)

We recently got a new coffee maker, which is something I’ve only been asking for since, roughly, the Bush administration. My working theory was simple: “Why does our coffee taste like flavored water?” Apparently that wasn’t a compelling argument. What worked was my wife getting a new job, which unlocked the “gift to myself” justification, which is the phrase people use when they have a little more money than they want to admit.

The new machine does make better coffee. It has a Bold button, which I respect. The Bold button charges you for the improvement in time — double the brew, double the wait — but the coffee tastes like actual coffee, so I’ll take it. She has full creative control over the settings. My only request is that every used coffee ground gets dumped on my roses for the next few weeks. My front roses have never looked better, which means at least someone in this house is consistently benefiting from my persistence.

My wife has also appointed herself Veto Queen of household ideas — specifically mine. The lamp situation is Exhibit A. We have a shared recliner, and there used to be a lamp right between our two seats until the recliner ate the cord. Poor planning or spousal plotting — jury’s still out. Since then I’ve been campaigning: “Can we get this lamp?” “What about this one?” My questions are never ignored, exactly. They’re just not acted on, which starts to feel like the same thing. Her explanation is always that she just hasn’t found one she likes.

This from a woman who can summon TEMU packages like she’s running a small import operation. The wedding shower boxes arrive daily. She knows how to search, scroll, and buy things she wants to find. I’m not saying she’s uninterested in my lamp. I’m just saying it smells a lot like she is.

The blackout curtain situation is a separate grievance. Our bedroom windows face east. This is wonderful for cool evenings on the back patio and terrible for a man who cannot go back to sleep once he knows the sun has clocked in and a hot day is waiting. All last spring and into summer I was awake before seven with no alarm and no plan to be awake before seven.

The blinds help. They don’t cancel the sun. I could wear a sleep mask, but I already wear earplugs to mute the night’s musical selections. Shutting down two of five senses before bed every night feels excessive. In tornado country, it could also be fatal. When my wife says it’s a shame I don’t sleep better, I smile and nod, confident in my own theories about why.

In a small act of rebellion, I ordered a chicken shredder. We grill a few pounds of chicken every week, and I have long believed our enchiladas would be better with shredded chicken instead of chunks. The device is simple — toss in the cooked chicken, twist a few times, done. Before I ordered, I made one strategic decision: orange. My color, unmistakably. Every household member would see that shredder and know whose idea it was. It was cheap, and I was prepared to absorb any guilt that came my way.

It arrived the next morning. She asked what it was with genuine enthusiasm. I explained — chicken shredder, better enchiladas, game changer. Without looking up, she said she’d had one on her list for a while and just hadn’t gotten around to ordering it yet.

Sure you did, dear.

The coffee is better. The roses are thriving. The enchiladas are improving. The lamp, I assume, is still under review.

The Cost of Rent

When our son temporarily moved back into our spare bedroom before his wedding, I made the standard dad joke about charging rent. The kind that isn’t really a joke.

He countered with lattes and espressos. Which sounded generous until I did the math and realized we’d need to consume coffee at levels typically reserved for medical residents and long-haul truckers to break even.

So he sweetened the deal with two tickets to a Thunder playoff game.

As a landlord, I found this reasonable.

There was one small wrinkle. The game fell on the same weekend he’d committed to being in a friend’s wedding. Poor planning, really — if you’re going to have friends, they should at least consult the NBA schedule. Through some workplace point system I don’t fully understand — something between airline miles and a Vegas loyalty program — he’d been saving up for exactly this kind of game. Once he committed to giving us the tickets, he dumped every point into the opening home playoff game. His coworkers, apparently uninterested in burning points on a boring first-round matchup, offered no resistance.

He did, for the record, manage to score tickets to Wednesday’s game. Nobody else wanted those either. First-round games are very boring.

Getting the tickets transferred to my phone was described as seamless. This is a word technology people use when they are being optimistic. Eventually, after some button pressing and what I can only assume was divine intervention, they appeared. Victory.

April 19th is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, which means downtown sees street closures and the city feels different. There’s the upcoming Art Festival setup, the Marathon connections, and the memorial events marking 31 years. It added a layer of reflection to what was otherwise a “let’s not get a parking ticket” mission.

We parked on the west side of Jeff’s old apartment building — his recommendation — which translated loosely to: park far enough away to question your choices, but save ten dollars. The walk took us past art show booths and through the Botanical Garden, and we eventually merged into the crowd moving toward the arena with the slow determination of migrating animals. We crossed the final street in police-approved mob fashion and successfully ignored a street preacher, hoping he’s able to plant some seeds.

My wife walked through the entrance carrying a Sonic drink like a seasoned contrabandist. No one stopped her. Whether this was arena policy or a lapse in attention, I have chosen not to investigate.

Every seat had a t-shirt and a clapper noisemaker. The shirts were extra-large, which felt simultaneously optimistic and judgmental. We were fine with extra-large.

Section 114 put us close enough to see everything without the monitors, which I appreciated. My varicose veins don’t prevent walking, but standing in place for extended periods is another matter entirely. When the crowd rose, and we did not, I used the monitors to catch whatever I was apparently missing by remaining seated like a reasonable person.

Blessing Offor sang the national anthem and performed at halftime. He wore sunglasses indoors, and I briefly wondered if he was trying to channel Stevie Wonder. Turns out, he actually has a story worth knowing. That one’s on me.

The camera work featured a lot of hip-level shots of dancers and performers and whoever else was on the floor. I’m told this is a stylistic choice. It is also, apparently, a young person’s broadcast world, and I’m just living in it.

The Thunder started slow, then remembered they were defending champions. By the third quarter, the outcome was about as uncertain as a Hallmark movie, and I found my attention drifting. At one point, I thought: if I were home watching this, I’d already be doing something else.

Final score: 119-84. Great seats, great outcome, questionable engagement on my part.

During the third quarter, the season-ticket holder next to Judy mentioned that the six seats in front of us belonged to out-of-town fans who never showed. We waited until the result was genuinely not in doubt, then quietly liberated two extra shirts — one for Jeff, one for his fiancée. Consider it a finder’s fee.

We left two minutes early. This is our standard “outcome is clear” protocol, and it almost never actually helps. We still ended up shuffling fifteen minutes behind a crowd moving at the speed of thoughtful contemplation.

I usually operate in about five walking gears. Judy has two, maybe three on a good day. Normally, I’d be quietly restless about the pace. But somewhere between the arena and the parking lot, it occurred to me that my best friend was right there, enjoying a beautiful Sunday afternoon with a man who complains about camera angles and caffeine-to-rent ratios.

When she’s happy to be there, the least I can do is find a higher gear of gratitude. Dial back the sarcasm. Pay attention to the win that’s actually happening.

More than three decades in, and she still wants to spend a Sunday afternoon with me. The least I can do is show up for it.

The Shortest Tech Support Call We Never Made

What damage can a ten-month-old do to your TV setup? More than we realized. More than seems physically possible, actually.

It started innocently enough. Ellie got hold of one of the remotes, turned the TV on, and we assumed it was harmless. Baby presses button, TV turns on — fine.

Here’s the thing about feeding Ellie: she flaps her hands behind her head while she’s taking her bottle, blindly dragging anything in reach into her orbit. Grandpa holds the bottle — this is established — so during feeding I move the remotes to the drink holder, safely out of range. System works. Problem solved.

What the system did not account for was afterward. Bottle done, burping complete, Ellie back on the floor. I drift into the kitchen or pull out my phone, and the remotes are still sitting in the drink holder — perfectly accessible to a child willing to pull herself up and attack from the front. Which she was.

After Friday night’s hockey game, we settled in to watch something. Standard process: TV on, navigate to Apple TV, enjoy the evening. Except nothing came up on Apple TV. Just the screen saver, sitting there, completely indifferent to the remote we were pointing at it. The remote and the TV had apparently reached an impasse while we weren’t looking, and nobody had informed us.

We tried everything. Recharging the remote. Restarting things. Staring at it with quiet fury. Eventually we surrendered, opened the Amazon app built into the TV, and watched something we hadn’t planned to watch. It was fine. We were not fine.

By Saturday afternoon, I had mentally written off the Apple TV entirely. Ten-month-olds: 1, Apple ecosystem: 0. I started logging into streaming services directly through the TV, which meant hunting down passwords, discovering some apps weren’t available, and arriving at the outer edges of my patience faster than I expected. Judy, after 35 years, recognized the signs immediately. Her internet search took about four minutes and produced a fix I hadn’t found in two hours of frustration.

A few steps, a reboot, some waiting we were impatient about, and the remote and Apple TV were talking again. Reconciled. Like nothing happened.

Do I think Ellie deliberately sabotaged our Friday night entertainment to demand more attention? No. She’s ten months old. But through sheer persistence and an impressive run of luck, she managed to decouple our remote from our streaming device, hold our evening hostage, and escape without consequence — because timeout is not yet in the toolkit.

The list is growing. Gates for the stairs. Cabinet locks. And now, apparently, a secure location for remotes that does not rely on our optimistic assessment of what she can reach.

She seems very pleased with herself. She always does.

Amateurs

We hit every red light on the way home from the last regular-season hockey game. Every single one. It was nearly 10:00 on a Saturday night, and the lights had not gotten the memo

My wife, in a tone that does not brook dissent: “What incompetent traffic engineers.”

This is not an unusual comment from her. We both share the impulse, actually. I come at it with sarcasm. She comes at it with how she would fix the problem. Neither approach accomplishes much, but both get to the root of who we are. I default to humor. She sees a problem and intuitively knows how to solve it.

If she could clone herself, she’d dispatch a copy to every corner of society plagued by inefficiency. We’ve had car-ride conversations where she single-handedly fixed healthcare, immigration, and the tax code before we reached the driveway. I realize the world is a lesser place for having only one of her — but if there were an army of her fixing the planet, I’d still only be married to the original. I can barely keep up as it is.

So I couldn’t let her traffic comment go without a small test. “We’re good at making brisket in the oven but not on the smoker,” I said. “Does that make us incompetent?”

Her reply, patient and obvious: “No, dear husband. We are smoking amateurs. We are not incompetent.”

This is the woman I love. Her humor is surgical. It doesn’t land with the same splash as mine, but it challenges me every time — and it’s a daily reminder that I don’t have a corner on wit in this household.

She had also handed both of us an escape hatch before Easter Sunday arrived.

We’ve attempted brisket on the smoker three or more times this hockey season. None of them were shoe leather exactly, but they involved more chewing than I prefer. Yesterday we swallowed our pride, pulled out the oven bag, and went with the hard-to-fail method. Six-plus hours, then a little time in the crockpot while we’re at church.

We may be amateurs in the backyard. At the table today, we’re professionals.

The “I Do” Adoption

My son is getting married in a couple of months. She is wonderful. She is also from a completely different culture than ours, which means we are all, on a fairly regular basis, figuring each other out.

That’s not a complaint. That’s just the truth.

When your kid gets married, you don’t just gain a daughter or son-in-law. You adopt them. Nobody tells you that when your kid says “I do,” you’re quietly saying it too. The vows are theirs. The adoption papers are everybody’s.

We’ve had our share of “whoops” moments. Some of them are hers. Some of them are ours. I’d be willing to bet that on the occasions where I thought she’d missed something, she had a perfectly reasonable explanation rooted in how she was raised — and I just didn’t know enough to ask. I’ve been married for 35 years. I still miss things. The idea that I’d have it all figured out with someone I’ve known for just over a year is ambitious, at best.

To his credit, my son prioritized pre-marital counseling before any of this got official. Smart move for any couple. For a cross-cultural one, it’s close to mandatory.

My wife is better at this than I am. She is more patient, more instinctively gracious, and far less likely to assign fault before asking a question. I am a work in progress. She has been working on that project for 35 years and will probably need a few more. It took me that long to become even slightly less selfish than I was on our wedding day.

We are, in a sense, the booby prize she gets for loving our son. She knew what she was signing up for with him. The rest of us came with the package.

What I do know is that she is trying. She genuinely loves our son. She has put real effort into being part of this family, even when this family probably made that harder than it needed to be. She’s learning us in real time. So are we.

The grace has to go both directions. Different families have different quirks even when they share a culture. When the cultures are genuinely different, you need more runway, more patience, and a willingness to say “I didn’t understand that — can you help me?” without anybody getting their feelings hurt. We are still building that. Some days are easier than others.

When they say “I do,” we all do, a little bit. We’re agreeing to figure each other out. To give grace before assigning blame. To ask before assuming. To remember that someone who does things differently isn’t doing them wrong.

I’ve needed that same grace extended to me more times than I can count.

Welcome to the family. We’re still under construction, too.

The Voice (Or: How I Learned to Nag Without Technically Nagging)

This is a further explanation of one of the titles included on my “semi-retired” business card. (Reminder Wrangler)

Somewhere after the last kid left for college, I developed a second voice.

Not a concerning one. Not the kind that tells you to do things. More of a guest narrator. A color commentator for the small, unresolved frustrations of domestic life. Specifically, my wife’s share of them.

It sounds exactly like my wife. Except sassier. And with slightly more self-awareness than she’d probably volunteer on her own.

Here’s how it works. The dishes pile up. Judy is, by longstanding treaty, the designated dishwasher. When the stack starts achieving architectural ambitions, I don’t say anything. I just wander past the sink, tilt my head, and murmur — in a voice that is not quite mine — “I wonder when the dish fairies are coming. You’d think they’d have been here by now.”

She knows exactly what’s happening. She’s been married to me long enough to read the subtext, which is: the dishes need doing. The Voice is just the delivery system. It’s a nag wearing a disguise, and the disguise isn’t even that convincing. But somehow it lands softer than the direct version, and we both know it.

The lamp incident lasted several months. We had a lamp behind the chair. The recliner ate its cord. I asked about a replacement — once, twice, roughly fourteen times over what felt like a minor geological era. When I finally deployed The Voice, it came out as: “Boy, I wish I could remember to buy that lamp. Andy hasn’t mentioned it today, so I guess he doesn’t want it anymore.” She smiled. She did not immediately buy the lamp. But the smile was acknowledgment, which is honestly most of what you’re after.

Then there was the peanut butter and jelly incident. These are the ones that make me regret The Voice’s existence.

I had made warmups — real food, intentional food, food that required actual effort and lived in the refrigerator with the reasonable expectation of being eaten. Judy opened the fridge, considered her options, closed it, and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I watched this happen in real time. I said nothing in my own voice, because my own voice would have had an edge to it that the situation didn’t technically warrant. So The Voice showed up instead.

“I know there are perfectly good warmups in there,” it said, with Judy’s cadence and Judy’s calm, “but the peanut butter and jelly is really speaking to me today. And honestly — Andy probably won’t even notice. He loves to throw uneaten food away.”

She laughed. I felt seen and also slightly ridiculous, which is more or less the emotional signature of a successful Voice deployment. The warmups, for the record, were eventually eaten. By me.

The bedtime reading situation is its own category. We both read before sleep. When she stops first, there’s an announcement — delivered with genuine tenderness but also the logistical clarity of a boarding gate closing — that I should probably wrap it up soon. When I stop first, I roll over and go to sleep. If I’m feeling spirited, I’ll glance over my shoulder and say in The Voice, “Don’t read too long, you know how it keeps me awake,” then pull the covers up with the serene expression of a man who has made his point.

I get sassier as the day goes on. Judy has documentation. By 9 p.m., The Voice has loosened up considerably and is operating with real creative confidence.

My wife is a kinder spirit than me — she has accepted this fully. Not just tolerated it. Accepted it. She even has her own version of my voice, which she deploys occasionally. Her renditions are, I will note, significantly more complimentary than mine. Her version of me seems to be a wiser, more generous person. I’m not sure who she thinks she married, but I appreciate the optimism.

Her responses track pretty cleanly to guilt level and degree of offense. Snoring gets a genuine “I’m sorry.” The dishes get something like, “They are piling up — I wish the dishwasher would come back from vacation.” The lamp gets a smile and a “Yes, I should get to that,” delivered with the calm of a woman who has decided to manage me rather than fight me.

The honest version of what The Voice is doing is this: it’s nagging with the volume turned down and a laugh track turned up. It keeps us from having the same conversation with teeth in it. After enough years of marriage, you develop these little systems — ways of saying true things without making them into a confrontation. The Voice is mine. It is weak camouflage. She sees right through it every time.

And she still seems pleased she married a sassy husband — which, after all these years, I’ve decided to take as a win.

The Morning Scrimmage: Why Every Marriage Needs a “Billeted” Punching Bag

My wife and I have been married for nearly 35 years, and I’ve learned one absolute truth: Marriage isn’t just about love; it’s about managing the “chirps.”

I am a natural-born chirper. If I have a witty observation or a mild grievance, it bounces around my skull like a puck rattling around a dryer drum until it finds an exit. My wife, however, is a “slow-thaw” morning person. She is not a fan of dialogue—and certainly not banter—until she’s well into her second cup of coffee.

For the sake of our domestic harmony, I have to get those chirps out of my system without bumping into her morning rhythm. Fortunately, we have “The Boys.”

The Peanut Butter Defense

Currently, our kitchen is populated by billeted hockey players. They are the perfect targets. They provide the friction I need to reach my “optimum flow” without waking the dragon — my wife, who is lovely precisely because she hasn’t spoken yet.

Take, for instance, the “Bagel Bandit.” This kid has a specific talent for “nutty perfection.” He’ll smear peanut butter on a bagel and then, as a final flourish, leave a thick glob on the knife before dropping it in the sink. Within minutes, that peanut butter undergoes a chemical bonding process that makes it “dishwasher-proof.”

On a morning when my wife is still on her first cup, I’ll drop a line on the Bandit:

  • “The dishwasher is a machine, son, not a miracle worker. Clean the blade.”
  • “If you lick that knife clean, the dishwasher will thank you for your service.”

The “Agile” boys—the ones with a high hockey IQ—will fire back. The “Slow-Mo” rookies just nod and say, “Okay, next time,” while they internally calculate how many minutes until practice.

The Buffer Zone

There is a method to my madness. My wife knows I like to banter, and as long as I don’t go too hard on the kids, she lets me run my plays. In fact, she’s grateful. By the time she’s ready for conversation, I’ve already burned off my sass on a 19-year-old defenseman.

The boys are the grease that keeps the marriage rolling through the years. When my wife is an “obstacle” to my flow—meaning she just wants to eat her toast in peace—the hockey boys step in to cover the difference.

The Sentiment in the Sarcasm

I’ll admit, the sentimental side of this gets hidden under the layers of trash talk. But it’s there. My wife gets the lion’s share of my heart, and whatever is left over goes to these boys who have become part of our daily chaos.

We had a visitor the other day who mentioned he does the dishes for his billet mom because she’s been ill. I looked at my most “agile” resident and asked if he’d ever consider such a noble act.

He didn’t miss a beat: “Well, if you were gravely ill, I might consider it. But since you’re healthy, I guess I’ll just keep letting you sharpen your wit on my dish-loading skills.”

After he made his comment, we exchanged a glance. We both knew the chirping wasn’t entirely one-sided.

The Long Game

How long will we keep these “billeted victims (their term, not mine)”  around? Only until the grandchildren are old enough to hold their own in a verbal sparring match. I need a house full of relatives with finely honed wits to keep me humble.

Until then, I’ll keep chirping at the boys. It keeps my mind sharp, the sink (mostly) clear, and my 35-year marriage exactly where it needs to be: in a state of graceful, quiet, peanut-butter-free peace.