Wedding Bliss

Marriage is a many splendid things.

I still can’t believe that I’m married. It’s going to be a year this September since the “BIG Day,” and for the most part life is exactly as it was prior to the pomp and circumstance of our “small” wedding. Our wedding was small in the same way that a 747 Jet is smaller than Howard Hughes’s “Spruce Goose.” Even though I’m not really a big party person, I must admit that I did enjoy the wedding more than I thought I would.

But a wedding is a short celebration, when compared to “the rest of your life.” It’s only the first centimeter of the tip of the iceberg. After everyone goes home, and you clean the nonsense off your car—you have to go and live your life.

Right away, people were bombarding us both with a very stupid question: “How does it feel?” I guess we were supposed to feel different, but at the time it was like turning 16 or 25. We just keeping marching forward, there is no sudden, dramatic transformation—and being married is a bit like that or so I thought.

Eventually there are things that you notice. There are little things, like having the same last name and being introduced as “Mr. and Mrs.”

As time passed, people quit asking us “how does it feel?” But it’s kind of ironic that they stopped, because a few months later things have begun to feel different.
And then it happened—I had what I’d consider to be the first “real” incident of my new married life.

Up until last month, if someone had hired me to write a dictionary entry for the word “marriage” (or better yet, put a gun to my head and asked me to define it), my response would be pretty much: “Marriage is when two people make an everlasting commitment…blah, blah, blah” you get the drift. My answer to the question “what is marriage” would have been bullshit. But last month something happened. It was so perfect, that later as I thought about it, I realized that it is the actual definition of marriage.

Jason’s No-Bullshit Definition of Marriage: Marriage is when you are told “TAKE MY DOG OUTSIDE SO HE CAN SHIT,” then when you get back inside after cleaning up a big, steaming pile of dog crap you are immediately asked “GIVE ME $20!” and you not only don’t kick this person’s ass, but you actually fork over the money with no qualms.

That’s marriage.

But just incase you’re confused let me reiterate—marriage is being told to do unpleasant things, doing them, AND then for some reason paying $20. Now, if someone other than my wife ran up to me and said “Take my dog outside so he can shit” and then followed that up with “Give me $20!” I would not only NOT give them any money (or take their fucking dog outside) but I’d kick the crap out of them. I would literally kick them so hard in the gut that they would shit themselves.

And yet my wife can not only get me to essentially PAY HER to take her dog out (because after I do it, I’m asked for money), but she does not get a massive beat-down. Somehow, as if by some kind of “marriage magic,” she is able to get away with it.

Now please understand, my wife is a very sweet lady and I lover her very much. She’s very patient and tolerates my insanity quite well. And I don’t regret marrying her for one second—but somehow marriage allows her this insane “free-pass.” After this particular, picture-perfect definition of marriage, incident happened I sat back and shook my head. I just couldn’t believe that she not only got away with it, but that I felt absolutely no ill-will towards her.

It’s really quite amazing.

So maybe the short-hand for “Marriage is when you are told “TAKE MY DOG OUTSIDE SO HE CAN SHIT,” then when you get back inside after cleaning up a big, steaming pile of dog crap you are immediately asked “GIVE ME $20!” and you not only don’t kick this person’s ass, but you actually fork over the money with no qualms” could just be that “marriage is amazing.”