Date Night

After twenty-two years of marriage, three kids, financial ups and downs, sickness and health, rights and wrongs, I still love “date night” with my wife. At a time in most marriages when the bloom is not just off the rose, but the petals are usually dead, dry and falling to the floor, I feel like I get a new delivery of flowers every week. Connie is without a doubt my best friend. The one person in this world I most enjoy spending time with. The fact that she gets more beautiful every day makes spending time with her all the easier, but it’s her heart that I love.

It’s not always easy…for either of us. You may find this hard to believe, but I do have my moments of a less than “cherub-like demeanor” (thank you, John Pinette for the apt description). Women are not the only ones with “mood swings” and mine are not on a schedule. Somehow, and thankfully so, Connie endures. In one way I am sure it helps that I travel a lot. I’m much easier to take in small doses.

Several years ago our pastor spoke about marriage and said that husbands and wives needed to have time for each other. He said his kids asked why he takes them to Krystal and their Mom to Outback. He told them it’s because he “loves her more.” He pointed out that the kids would be leaving one day, to build their own lives, and the parents would be left alone. If they didn’t have a good relationship and enjoy each other’s company, it would be a long painful retirement…or divorce. Connie and I had been living that philosophy for a while, but it was nice to hear it from the pulpit. We have tried to have date nights on regular basis since the kids were born, but it wasn’t until Shelby got old enough to babysit (for free!) that our dating kicked into gear.

Our goal would be one date night per week, but it’s usually not that frequent. It’s hard to date when I’m in DC and she’s in Oak Ridge. It is a priority for us both, however, so when I am in town, we let the kids know that at some point, we will be going out. On the night of the date, we don’t give them time to argue. We change clothes quickly, grab the car keys, and as we are heading out the door we give them some quick instructions, “Ramen Noodles are in the pantry. Don’t fight. Walk the dog. Don’t call us unless there’s smoke or someone’s bleeding.” Just as the door closes, we yell a final “Love you, don’t wait up!” And we are on our own.

We don’t always go for dinner and a movie, but it’s one of our favorite dates. Connie likes movies, not with the rabid enthusiasm that I do, but she enjoys the experience. For her it’s more about the popcorn. She loves movie popcorn. I learned some time ago that we do not go to dinner before the movie, because we are too full to want popcorn. It is always popcorn and movie first, then dinner, then the discussion of where else we can go because it’s just too early to go home. Unfortunately, Oak Ridge doesn’t have much of nightlife.

Last night our movie of choice was I Love You, Man. We were a couple of minutes late and I missed more than half of the first preview (I tell myself it was the first. There could have been ten more before it. I would not know. Because were late.). I dealt with my depression over arriving late very well, mainly because the theater was mostly empty. We had our choice of seats, and the two other people in attendance did not appear to be chatters. We settled in and Connie took her first bite of popcorn. The look on her face told me it would be a good night.

Sometimes theaters recycle old, leftover popcorn. At the end of the evening, they put the unsold popcorn into large bags and then mix it in with fresh the next day. It’s a perfectly understandable business practice. (I don’t know how they break even with popcorn selling at only $5.50 a bag anyway, so any little jump on keeping costs down is a positive thing. More power to them.) Only the most discernable popcorn eaters would notice the difference, and Connie is definitely discernable. She is used to eating the mixed bag popcorn, and it satisfies her popcorn needs. But last night, at that perfect time, we had that rarest of movie popcorn treats. All fresh, just popped, perfectly buttered, lightly salted, melt in your mouth popcorn. It was nirvana.

The movie began, and with Connie already in a popcorn induced feeling of euphoria, everything was even funnier. Even without the popcorn, it would have been funny. If you have not heard of the movie, it’s the story of a man who becomes engaged, and he and his fiancé then realize that he does not have a close male friend to be his best man. His attempts to find some male friends are both kind of sad and hilarious. We both loved the movie.

Connie laughed a lot, and I loved watching her as much as the movie. Then I started noticing some interesting similarities to my own life. The lead character was spectacularly awkward. His best efforts to say the right thing, be cool, or make a joke, usually left him looking foolish. He was much more comfortable talking to women than men, generally because he was the “safe, platonic, non-threatening male type.” He wasn’t a “sports” guy. He wasn’t a “poker” guy. He couldn’t master those guy “handshakes” which seem so effortlessly smooth when most guys do them. (I have often wondered...did they have a “handshake” class that I was not invited to as a young man? How do guys seem to instinctively know what kind of slap, shake, bump and hold to do, and in the specific order required at any given time? Whenever I try to do that, I end up in some awkward scene where my fingers poke at the wrist of the other guy and our thumbs miss that required interlock to bring the hands smoothly together. I gave up on the guy handshake a long time ago, and now just do a half hearted wave thing that lets them know that I am challenged in that area. They seem to understand.)

As the lead character searched for a Best Man for his wedding, I thought back to my own. My best man was my Father. My groomsmen were my older brother, two cousins and a brother in law. I had not thought about it before, probably because I loved them all and it seemed perfectly natural to make those choices at that time, but now I have to wonder: why did I not have friends? Was I so hard to get along with that only my family could put up with me?

After the movie, as we enjoyed our dinner, I shared my thoughts with Connie. Did she see any similarities between me and the awkward doofus on the screen? She laughed again, like in the theater, and said “well, yeah…of course.” I was once again reminded of how in synch we are about things, and that obviously she would have noticed. It was touching. Then it struck me that she was basically saying I was an “awkward doofus” and I was a little less touched.

Her laugh became a smile, and her eyes looked at me with warmth and love. After twenty-two years of marriage, three kids, financial ups and downs, sickness and health, rights and wrongs, and me being socially clumsy and an occasional embarrassment, she still enjoyed “Date Night” with me. I was her “awkward doofus.” I never felt so blessed.