I like your mother
I like your brother
I like you
And you like me, too
We’ll get a preacher
I’ll buy a ring
We’ll hire a band
With an accordion
A violin
And a tenor who can sing

— randall stuart newman

—

Exactly 24 years ago today, for reasons that continue to escape me, Mo agreed to put up with me forever. I’m fairly certain she knew about the blister-popping duties when she signed on, so I’m holding her to it.

This photo was taken a few years before the wedding. No, she is no longer rocking the bangs. And I can’t recall if she struck the girl scout pledge pose when saying our vows. But still cute as a button. And buttons are pretty damn cute.

I thought I had a good life to that point, but it’s like when I was a kid and we finally got a color TV, seeing Dorothy land in Oz and realizing that life didn’t have to be black and white.

And they lived happily ever after. And still do.

After 24 years, you settle into familiar routines. I’m an idiot; she’s an artist. It makes for a great pairing, except the idiot stuff.

The best part: You can read each other’s minds.

For instance: I’m out today on the canal. It’s a hundred million degrees, and I have no water. I left it at the truck in the parking lot a half-mile away, thinking I would come back after one loop. But then I kept going. Loop after loop. Mile after mile. Dehydration after dehydration.

I’m thinking about the hiker who died last month after bragging about how only idiots can die while hiking. I keep flashing back to the part about me being an idiot.

Finally I’m at the point where I can make the turn and get back to the truck.

And so I go for another loop. See previous idiot comment.

I mentally write my obit as my life flashes before my eyes. Sadly, it’s in black and white, although I assume if I had watched long enough it would have switched to technicolor. Or a house would have landed on me.

Just then, the phone buzzes. It’s Mo, sending me a text.

And just like that, I’m saved. I drink a quart of icy Skratch in the shade on the side of the trail. Having learned my lesson, I stop for the day. OK, I continue for six more miles to get in the ruthless Bruce Denton’s requirement, but at least I feel bad about it.

The Hallmark movies make love out to be some grand thing, but really it’s not. It’s finding someone who somehow senses that you need something and is always there to save you. Someone who shows up on her bike in the parking lot, assumes the moron didn’t take water, finds him on the trail and gives him a lifesaving elixir and an anniversary smooch without punching him for being an idiot. Why does that idiot part keep coming up?

Also, she makes great brownies.

I still have no idea what she sees in ME, though.

I feel sorry for all the other guys in the world who don’t get to be the luckiest guy in the world because I somehow got that honor.

I just hope she never wises up.

Dammit. Now I’m going to have flying monkey nightmares tonight for sure …

You and me you and me, baby
You and me you and me you and me, baby