July, 1990

The club was jumping on a Saturday night. I was scanning the room, taking in the crowd, looking for a dance partner. I noticed one chick giving me a pretty direct look. She had long, dark brown hair, blue eyes, tanned skin, and was wearing a hot pink top/miniskirt combo. She looked young, but to be in the club she had to be at least 21 years old, (unless she had a fake ID). I was about to turn 23, myself.

People were moving back and forth between us, but she kept her eyes on me. Definitely, I had to approach her. I made my way through the crowd, and she had a big smile on her lips and in her eyes. I leaned in to ask her to dance without having to shout over the pumping music. She said yes, and we made our way to the dance floor.

We danced together through several songs, both fast and slow, and then left the dance floor together. We formally introduced ourselves to each other, and I met her friend. We stayed together the rest of the night, dancing some more, talking some, and I got her phone number before we parted.

A few days later, the day before my 23rd birthday, I called her. I asked if she’d go out with me for dinner on my birthday, but she said she already had plans. Oh. Yeah. But she suggested we make Saturday night a date, and I took the offer.

I spent my birthday playing games with my friends, but I kept thinking about that girl in the hot pink outfit I had met in the club.

Date night came, and we had a good time getting to know each other. She was, indeed, 21 years old, and an education major at the university. Smart, sweet, genuinely nice, pretty, warm, soft, smooth . . . ahem.

The first date led to a second, to a third, to a tenth, and on. We got along just perfectly. When we weren’t in class, or at work, we were with each other. We just loved being together. We’d hang out at her apartment, or at my apartment, or somewhere on school campus.

I wouldn’t call it “love at first sight.” It was more like just finding that perfect fit. We could sit in the same room together, not having to say anything to each other, and we just felt perfectly comfortable. We enjoyed just being within sight of each other, and especially within arm’s reach.

We became tighter and tighter over the weeks and months. A year passed, and it was obvious we had become a part of one another. At over a year and a half, we got a dog, together. We named the dog “Geordi,” after Geordi Laforge of Star Trek: the Next Generation – a show we watched together every Saturday night. This was a sign of a real commitment to our staying together.

A couple or so more years passed, and we were going into our final year of college. (She had completed her first degree, and was about to wrap up her second. I was a late starter.) We decided marriage was the best next step.

May 20, 1995 — 16 years ago, today.

The week after college graduation, we got married in her hometown, after almost 5 years of dating. I have the photo of her in her wedding dress on my desk at work. It makes me smile. She’s so different today, but so much the same, too. She’s still the little thing she’s always been, and still looks considerably younger than me. She’s still smart, sweet, genuinely nice, pretty, warm, soft, smooth . . . ahem.

And I’m still the silly nerd that apparently endeared her to stay with me. I hope so, anyway.

16 years of marriage, plus 5 years of dating; we’ve been together for 21 years of our lives. That just doesn’t sound like it can be right. I don’t feel old enough, she doesn’t look old enough. But thinking back, it seems that our life has progressed perfectly naturally.

We still like just hanging out with each other. We can still sit quietly in a room together and be completely comfortable just with each other’s mere presence. The cliché is to say we go together like peanut butter and chocolate, or peanut butter and jelly, but that’s putting two different things together. I’d say we’re like peanut butter and more peanut butter.

Bullgrit

I got my vehicle registration notice in the mail this month. That means I’ve had my new truck for one year, now. (It was “new” to me; it was “used” to the dealership.)

After buying and settling into our new house last year, I decided it was time to upgrade from an older-model sedan to a newer-model SUV. So I called my dad and got his input, advice, and help to find the right truck.

My dad loved car dealing. He’d been through the car selling and buying process many times through his years, and it was something he just really enjoyed. A few years before, he had helped us find our minivan. We told him what we were looking for — make, model, color, mileage, price, etc. — and a couple weeks later, he’d found it. Tada! Just like that.

He then quickly found a good buyer for the car the minivan was replacing. He was that good at the whole thing.

So last year, I told him to start looking for an SUV. I told him what I was looking for — less specifically than with the minivan — and a couple weeks later he’d found several vehicles within my range of choices.

In the two weeks while he was searching for me, I had come to be interested in the Ford Escape. It’s an SUV, but it’s not a big bus. The very first vehicle he found for me to look at was a red Mercury Mariner. The Mariner is the same chassis and body style as the Escape, (as is the Mazda Tribute); you can’t easily tell the difference between them without seeing the name plate. But the Mercury name didn’t sit well with me.

“No offense, Dad,” I said, “but a Mercury isn’t my kind of car. It’s my grandparents car.” I mean, I’d never noticed anyone under the age of 60 driving a Mercury.

He nodded, “I understand, son. But you realize it’s the same thing as a Ford Escape, right?”

Yeah, I understood intellectually. But at my gut level, a Mercury was an old person’s car.

So I passed on the Mariner without bothering to look at it in person. Within another couple weeks, he showed me some other vehicles in the same general range that I was looking for: a Jeep, a Honda, and a couple of others. Then he found a Ford Escape. It looked good in the pictures he sent me, and so we went to the dealership for a test drive. Coincidentally, it was the same dealership that had the Mercury Mariner Dad had told me about first.

I test drove the Escape, but there was a wind noise from somewhere that just bugged me enough that I couldn’t sell myself on it. While back at the dealership, after the test drive, the Mariner came into our discussion. “What the heck,” I said, “I’m here, let’s give it a test.”

It was a good looking truck. And it drove great. Yeah, I fell in love with it and bought it. So after all the other SUVs we looked at, and all the other test drives we went on after he showed me that Mariner first thing, I ended up, again going with his first find. Just goes to show, the man knew how to find the right vehicle.

That car shopping experience was the last time my dad was really up and about mostly normal. A few weeks later he went into the hospital for cancer surgery, and things went very bad for several weeks. He never completely recovered from that experience, and six months after helping me find my new truck, he passed away from the cancer.

This license registration renewal letter on my desk is a bitter-sweet reminder of a happy memory.

Bullgrit

I was reading through a few old comic books the other day, just for fun and relaxation at the end of a long hard day. Half the fun of reading old comic books is looking at the old advertisements through the pages. For instance, let me show you some from an issue of Spectacular Spider-Man published at the end of 1979. (I would have been 12 years old.)

This first one is on the inside of the front cover:

Oh man, do you remember air rifles? I remember I had a Daisy single cock rifle, and later my little brother got a Crosman pump rifle. One of my good friends back then got a pump air pistol — that thing was awesome. We’d pump that sucker as many times as our muscles could manage, and then we’d shoot a Sears catalog to see how many pages it would penetrate. Does anyone even sell air rifles anymore? I haven’t seen one in a store in ages.

These next two ads jumped out at me at the time I was reading the other night mainly because I had just worked out that evening:

I love these! The old days when women were too skinny because they didn’t eat right, and men could get an Atlas body in one week! What the hell were people eating bad in the 70s that caused them to be too skinny?

And lastly, t-shirt iron-ons:

Cheryl Ladd, Suzanne Somers, and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders! Hubba hubba. Oh, and “Kiss Rock Group”. Iron-on transfers for a buck. For comparison, this comic book cost 40 cents.

Bullgrit

I haven’t had a soft drink/soda in going on 9 years; I decided to give up my Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, and Coke addiction when our first child was still little. I didn’t need all the bad gunk, (caffeine, sugar, etc.), and I figured it would be easier to keep our (then only) child from getting into them if he didn’t see me always drinking the stuff. I talked about quitting cold turkey here.

Several months ago, I discovered Tropicana Light Orangeade. It comes in a 20 oz bottle, has no caffeine, and only 10 calories per bottle. It actually tastes really good, and so it immediately became my personal little treat to satisfy my sweet cravings without injecting a bunch of sugar into my system. It served as my stereotypical “beer” each evening when I got home from work. I’d pull into the garage, get out of my truck, open the garage refrigerator, grab a bottle of this orangeade, and walk into the house.

But then it stopped showing up in stores. It disappeared from everywhere we had previously found it. Turns out, Tropicana stopped making the drink. Well, damn.

I went a few weeks without having my liquid cheer, and then I was introduced to Fanta Zero Orange drink: sugar free, 0 calories, looked promising. But how did it taste?

The carbonation shocked me. I know that’s a strange concept, but really, it did. I haven’t had a single swig of anything carbonated in almost a decade. My palate has long sense forgotten the sensation, so the fizz and bubbles totally caught me off guard. I actually had the reaction you see on TV and in movies when someone throws back a shot of whiskey for the first time.

But otherwise, it’s good. I decided to give this a shot at being my “evening beer,” and although it took a few cans to get over the carbonation sensation, it’s serving me well.

* * *

As a family, we usually drink water with our meals. (Plus some milk and/or juice at breakfast.) Neither of our boys drinks any kind of soda, and only rarely will I drink tea. (Ice tea, sweet, the way God makes it, naturally.) Judging from the way some restaurants, (mostly of the fast food variety), we must be the only people in America who drink water with our meals.

Whenever we order something that can come as a single, (like a sandwich), or as a combo, (like a sandwich and drink), it seems to throw the order-taker for a loop when we turn down the “deal.” Yesterday, I actually had to explain my decision to the cashier when he tried to explain to me how we’d get the drink with the food due to the day’s special deal. We made our order at one end of the line, and then when we and our food reached the check out, the guy automatically handed us soda cups, (instead of the water cups we know they usually give for water).

“We’re just getting water,” I said.

“But,” he said, “you get a drink with the meal today.”

I looked up at the sign announcing the daily deals, and saw the price. Sure, the food-and-drink deal was cheaper than normally buying the food and drink individually, but it was still a buck higher than just the food and water. (The drinks are normally $1.50.) I’m not all that tight with my money, but this would be four bucks more for something we didn’t want and wouldn’t get. It’s the principle of the thing.

“No,” I said, “we don’t want the daily deal. We just want waters.”

“Really? he said, astonished.

“Yes, we just want waters.”

“OK, well, you can still use these cups to get water,” he said, and tried to give me the big cups.

We go to this restaurant a lot, so we know how the system works. “You probably should just give us the water cups, since we aren’t paying for sodas,” I said.

The teenager at the register shrugged his shoulders and traded the big soda cups for the smaller, clear water cups. He then told me the price of our meals.

I looked at the register screen. “You charged us for sodas,” I said. We’ve been there a lot. I know how much our meals usually cost.

“No,” he argued. “The sodas are free with the deal today.”

“No,” I argued back. “How much is a burrito normally?”

“Um, I don’t know,” he said. “Charlie,” he spoke to his coworker, “how much is a burrito?”

Charlie looked over at us and answered, “Something like four forty-nine.”

“And,” I added to the cashier, “how much is the daily special with the drink?”

“Um, I don’t know,” he said. “Charlie…”

I looked up at the daily special announcement: the meal plus drink was $5.55. A dollar more, per meal, for drinks we didn’t want.

Charlie came to the register and listened to the cashier explain the inconceivable concept of how we didn’t want the meal special. Fortunately, Charlie didn’t try to argue with me, and he just altered the sale to the correct amount. I paid, took my water cups and moved on with our food.

Really, that whole exchange was unnecessary. I don’t think the cashier even really understood what my “problem” was. He’s probably still confused about why anyone wouldn’t take “free soda.” I wonder if he ever bothered looking at the prices to see what the meal deal actually was. We don’t drink water to save money, we drink water to drink water. Are we the only Americans who do?

Bullgrit