Sometimes, you just know that you’re married. You know it. I think husbands and wives experience different versions of this, so I’m going to speak exclusively to the male side, since I understandably lack inside knowledge of the alternative.
I experienced two of these moments today. The first was when I found myself in a robust debate with my wife about the merit and character of the vegetables I like, and the vast ocean of ones I do not. My taste buds offer strong retuns on carrots, brocolli, peas, corn, any kind of lettuce, cucumbers, onions, and colliflower (no matter how bizarre I find that little albino broccoli). Maybe I’m crazy, dear reader, but I think this is a decent, if not spectacular, showing on vegetables.
My wife disagrees, politely at first, then vehemently, with pounding of her little fists and epithets about the vitamin intake of our children, all of whom are strictly hypothetical at this point. That’s a fun thing about being in a marriage that is explicitly aimed towards fostering new human beings: even when you don’t have kids, you’re worrying about them.
Some of you may know that Corelyn is a vegetable enthusiast, so much so that she is blind to the fact that “vegetable” and “enthusiast” form a contradiction in terms. For her, few things are more enticing than squash, asparagus and spinach. I have reminded her several times that to consume any of these things is very wise, but to seek them out, to feel the pangs of desire when they are absent, borders on lunacy; she doesn’t grasp this. You want me to prove it to you? I can. Notice that all three of those vegetables do not have a plural form. Even the English language doesn’t want a lot of these things around.
Her war, of course, is not really for my enrichment, she’s given up on me. No, dear reader, she’s worried about what I’ll do with the babies she may permit me to help create. Corelyn is well aware that her kids are going to groan and pout when she piles a mound of asparagus and spinach all over their dinner plate, and she’s fine with that, because she plans to wear them down over time until they, like her, develop a “fondness” for these things which I can only assume is some kind of wilderness survival reflex built into the human body.
But all of her efforts will be for naught if her male counterpart doesn’t tow the line; kids are notorious for finding things their parents disagree on and exploiting them. If I’m not burying my face in a rancorous heap of artichokes every night, they’re going to catch on, and when they do, she knows there is potential for her family to form a little alliance against mommy’s nutritional jihad. I think my wife can already picture her hypothetical children, giggling and snorting as their father scrapes his spinach down the garbage disposal while she’s not looking.
And I won’t lie to you, dear reader, that really could happen.
So Corelyn has adopted a pre-emptive strike policy, one which will unfold into a sustained front when the kids are actually born, and then a coup de gras when they hit adolescence. She will insist to my nine year old son or daughter that “your daddy loves asparagus,” and when the child looks to me for visual confirmation, I will already know that anything short of robust affirmation will cause a steady decline in a certain activity which is itself technically responsible for my predicament.
For some weird reason, I’m really looking forward to it.
The other marital moment of today happened when my wife told me that today I would be attending an in-house seminar on bathroom cleaning. I honestly think that the image of me sitting in a folding chair in the wash room doorway, listening to my wife explain where grime is most likely to form in between the tiles on the wall, is better than any commentary I can give on it.
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