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 don’t like yard work. I like the look, the smell, and the feel under my feet of a freshly groomed yard, but I really don’t like the work. I never have. Yet, as much as I would like to just never have to do it again, I don’t want my wife to have to mow our yard, and I can’t bring myself to pay a professional lawn service to mow our yard.
 
I mowed my mom’s yard and my dad’s yard when I lived at home. I also mowed 4-6 other yards for weekend money when I was a teenager. Since being married, (16 years this month), I’ve mowed the yards of our homes. So, I’ve been mowing for over 20 years of a 30 years time span.
 
Several years ago, my wife had to mow our yard because I was injured and just couldn’t do it for a couple weeks. It bothered me to see her out there around our home doing my man-job. It made me feel like I was failing at being a man and a husband. Strangely, not being able to mow my own yard bothered me more than not having a job when I was laid off.
 
Last week, my wife went out and mowed our yard because I was having to work late every day. The yard was already over due for a mowing when my late working hours came up, so the yard couldn’t wait just another week. So she went out and did it herself. Again, her having to do that in my place bothered me.
 
Why not just hire a lawn service? Because it’s my responsibility. As much as I may dislike it, it is a symbol of my duty as a homeowner, a husband, a man. It’s not like plumbing or electrical work that I just am not trained for, and might make a big mess of if I tried. It’s lawn mowing – something I am very well trained in and very well experienced with.
 
When we first moved into our new home, a year and a half ago, one of our new neighbors was talking with me about our yards. He’s an Indian, (from India), probably in his 30s, and he asked if I did my own lawn mowing. He asked if it was something hard to do, or if it was something to leave to professionals; he had never mowed a yard before. This concept amazed me. I told him, “Well, I’ve done it since I was 12 or 13, so it ain’t too hard to do.”
 
Heck, it takes me less than an hour to mow and trim and rake my yard. It’s not a complicated thing, it’s not a physically hard thing. But it is a dirty activity, and a sweaty activity, and loud, and a bother that I really don’t like. But still, I do it, despite having options to let someone else do it.
 
I’m sure there’s probably some psychological issue with me, why I almost desperately cling to this activity that I actively dislike. But is it just me?
 
Bullgrit

These t-shirts are probably fairly obscure references: the AD&D shirts. AD&D, in the gaming world, stands for “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” — the D&D of the 80s and 90s. AD&D in the insurance world, stands for “Accidental Death & Dismemberment” — you probably have this coverage in your own insurance policy, right now.

Old-school AD&D has a reputation, (of arguable accuracy), of being especially deadly & dangerous to the characters in the game. (Not to the players of the game!) So . . . well, I hope the play on words is obvious at this point. (Also, Gary Gygax, the creator of AD&D, once worked for an insurance company, and said that he was amused that the company offered AD&D coverage. But probably only real fanboys know this little piece of trivia.)

The text on the shirts uses the same font and style as the old AD&D game books. The first shirt below is “early” AD&D, and the second shirt is “late” AD&D. My fellow gamer geeks who played AD&D back in the day will surely immediately recognize this. I’m actually pretty proud of these designs even though they’re for a very small demographic.

Accidental Death & Dismemberment

Bullgrit

This t-shirt post is to explain as well as introduce a design. I understand that some of the shirts directed at good ol’ boys and dads might not be appreciated by non-Southerners and non-dads. And of course the gamer geek designs probably don’t mean anything to non-gamer geeks, (especially non-D&D-gamer geeks). But there are several designs I expected to be understood by almost any audience.

For instance, the 26.2 reference:

I was rather surprised when at least a couple of people who’ve seen it, completely didn’t get it. One person just gave it and me a blank stare. Another person asked, “Did you measure it?”

I really didn’t expect the 26.2 reference to be obscure. I mean, I see it pretty much every day, in various styled stickers on the back of cars. 26.2 miles is the distance of a marathon — a bumper sticker is an announcement that the person has run a marathon, (or is at least some level of runner, possibly aspiring to run a marathon).

Bullgrit