How to Stay Married

August 25, 2008 · Filed Under Blog, Sam's Stuff

If you read this site or listen to our show (and if you’re reading but not listening, you are seriously fucking cheating), then you know that Kim and I recently marked 19 years of marital endurance. If you listen to the show, you are also probably thinking to yourself, “How is that even fucking possible. Sam is a complete dick.”

But I have a secret.

She thinks she needs me.

In reality, she doesn’t. Kim is both as tough and resourceful as the engineer on an Alaskan crab boat. Ask any mouse, this is a woman that will happily kill your dumb ass for messing with her Oreos. Then she’ll make some kind of centerpiece out of your bones and sew a delightful baby jumper from your mousey hide.

And if Kim ever understood just how superfluous I am around here, I would be so very, very screwed. That means I must take great pains to be alert for those times when my wife is trying to do something and, for whatever reason, she can’t. This is a rare fucking event, friends and neighbors, akin to finding a $1 million painting next to a dumpster or winning the lottery four times in a single week.

So just imagine the excitement on the day I heard wailing and gnashing of teeth coming from the bathroom. Even more thrilling was the fact that it wasn’t one voice raised in anguish, but two. Music to my ears, because that meant not only had Kim failed to accomplish a task, but she had already asked for help and that was a failure, too. Holy shit, this was the Holy Grail of opportunities. Except, with less blood-of-our-savior-in-a-crusty-old-cup and more fairly-simple-task-that-no-one-seems-able-to-do. But you get the point.

I just about had the vapors by the time I got to the bathroom to see what was perplexing the two oldest females in my house. They were making all kinds of unhappy noises, sniping at each other while Kim tried to give direction and Thing 1 tried to over think the whole project. The culprit, source of all the agony? A perm.

Normally, this is the kind of task that Kim takes care of her all by her lonesome, usually while balancing the budget, vacuuming the house, and cleaning the pool. But she had waited too long this time, and her hair had outgrown her arms. Like a T-Rex, she was now cursed with arms far too short for the task at hand. Twist and turn as she might, she could not stretch out her puny arms to the very ends of her luxuriant tresses, dooming her to a life of lank, limp, hair.

Thing 1 tried to be helpful, but she’s not exactly known for her coordination or ability to take instruction. There was only one person who could do the job. And that person was me. It took an hour of rolling up hair and fucking around with these fiddly little papers. An hour of listening to people try and tell me how to do something that they’d already failed at doing, but what the hell, I stuck it out. In the end, I won, because I did the job no one else could.

And that, men of the world, is how you stay married. You can bring them roses and diamonds, you can tell them all the sweet little nothings they can swallow, but in the end, none of that matters. It doesn’t even really matter if you mow the yard, or take out the trash, or even put the seat down on the toilet.

What matters to your marriage is that, when your partner can’t do something, you’re ready, willing, and able to step up and say, “Let me do that for you.”

And that’s the secret of staying married.

Tags: family, Kim, known, marriage, Sam

Comments

2 Responses to “How to Stay Married”

Paul Barton on August 25th, 2008 2:37 pm

Well said.
Smd1 on August 25th, 2008 10:55 pm

Nice suck up job Sam, what did you do?

But really, you and Kim ( from what I can tell listening to the show) are truly a match made in heaven (or a one horse town in nowhere land). You both have great values and common sense, something that is not so common anymore. I am really glad that you guys decided to share that by podcasting. Besides if Kim did not have you she would have to learn the podcasting equipment on her own.

Shawn (smd1)