How Did Tefchnogoly Help My Funny Valentine
My Funny Valentine
"You're the only person I know," the 23-year-old woman who became my wife told me soon after our first date, "who needs a second chance to make a good first impression."
Years later, after I had misbehaved with her — I conveniently forget how — Elvira handed me a sympathy card. Inside, she had written, "Because you are so annoying, my heart goes out to you."
Recently, on our 38th wedding anniversary, I said to her, "I just wish I deserved you." Immediately she replied, "So do I."
And that's pretty much how it's gone since we met on Oct. 8, 1976. Without warning Elvira delivers these withering wisecracks directly at my head. Ducking is pointless. Sometimes I feel forever doomed to play straight man to her.
"I think that might have come out wrong," I once explained after spouting an awkward remark. "If it came from your mouth," she responded, "I'm sure it did."
"Do you find me too needy?" I once asked her, knowing right away that I was in for it. Her answer was, "I've come across beggars on the street less needy than you."
Once, we finished discussing something important and, feeling deeply collaborative, I asked, "Are we on the same page here?" "Bob," she said, "sometimes I think we're in different libraries."
If I've learned anything from our long marriage — and Elvira may question whether in fact I have — it's that the right partnerships help put you, and then keep you, on the straight and narrow.
As it happens, I, too, tend to joke around, so I gamely play along. "Well, I have good news and I have bad news," I said once after arriving in our apartment from the office. "I'm home." Minutes later, I added, "Now that I'm home, of course, I could make you happy. Or, on the other hand, I could stay."
Often we get into a back and forth, bantering away. Once, after a wisecrack to Elvira fell flat, I asked her, "When did you stop knowing how to take a joke?" "Probably," she said without missing a beat, "right around the time you stopped knowing how to make any."
Another time, kidding around, Elvira asked me, "Do you think I'm insane?" Feeling lawyerly, I replied, "Asked and answered."
"You wore cologne," she once said to me. "Anything to make you happy," I said. "Well, you could be nice to me," she said imploringly. "Yes, I could," I said. "But it's easier for me to wear cologne."
"Ah, yes," I said to her once after we had a laugh together, "the fun here never ends." Her comeback: "Sometimes it never starts either."
More than once Elvira has insisted I pay close attention to everything she tells me. So I recently offered a highly practical suggestion. "Maybe it's best," I said, "if you talk to me only when I'm actually listening."
Humor is just how we've always expressed ourselves to each other, our lingua franca. Our longstanding philosophy as a couple is that life is much too serious a matter to take too seriously.
At the same time, such insult comedy can serve a corrective purpose for bride and groom. For example, it gives Elvira the opportunity to cut me down to a manageable size and, in the process, keep me in my place. As a result, our marriage has achieved a perfect balance of power. She has most of it.
That's what I found out in no uncertain terms just a few years ago after I explained why I had just given her an update on some family issue. "Just trying to keep you in the loop," I said. "Bob," she said with an exasperated sigh, "You can try all you want to keep me in the loop. But I thought you understood. I am the loop."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/well/family/my-funny-valentine.html
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