20 years of bliss (and no pepper spray)

By Scott Hollifield
Published: May 17, 2008

On our 20th anniversary, my lovely, red-headed wife and I sat down and took an honest assessment of our relationship, how far we had come in our two decades together and what the future holds for a couple of crazy kids that everyone said would never make it.
It was the kind of deep, heartfelt dialogue that only two soul mates can share.
“Look, honey, ‘Die Hard 2’ is on HBO again. It’s Willis time!”
“OK. I’ll make some popcorn.”
“Extra butter. It’s our anniversary.”
No, it wasn’t a Lifetime channel moment filled with soft-focus tears and a swelling, string-laden soundtrack, but, for gosh sakes, we’ve been looking across the room at each other for 20 years. What’s left to say?
Should she confess her brief yet torrid affair with Carlos the Weasel, the international terror merchant and fourth-most-wanted man in the world?
Should I finally explain my late-night trips, the digging at 4 a.m. and the odd smell coming from the crawl space?
Sorry, we don’t have any secrets left to reveal. We’re just two people who’ve weathered 20 years, for better and for worse.
In that time we’ve worn out six cars, three hamsters and two dogs. We’ve gone from a rented single-wide trailer to a modest home of our own with a couple of pit stops in between. We’ve watched a squalling baby magically transformed into a 12-year-old girl who sometimes wields a bit too much of her daddy’s sharp-tongued sarcasm.
We’ve fought and tussled and tossed various objects into the yard but managed to resolve all our differences without the use of pepper spray, Tasers or restraining orders.
So, the honest assessment of our relationship fit easily into the few minutes between the last kernel popping in the microwave and Bruce Willis’ opening scene. It went something like this:
“Can you believe it, honey? Twenty years of marital bliss with the man of your dreams. And they said we’d never make it.”
“Who said we’d never make it?”
“Your family. My family. All our friends. The wedding caterer. The preacher. The woman who played the piano. The guy at the gas station where we stopped to ask directions to the hotel after the wedding. The ticket agent at the airport. The stewardess. The fat guy who sat two seats over on the plane. The kid in Jamaica selling T-shirts by the side of the road. The woman with a big basket on her head ...”
“OK, OK. We made it 20 years, but where do you think we’ll be 20 years from now?”
“Rebelling against our robot overlords.”
“Please, Scott, not robots again.”
“You won’t listen. No one will listen. Science has run amok. I warned the world of the robot squirrel. Now, TV news tells me, a new robot developed by Honda Motor Co. has conducted the Detroit Symphony in a performance of a song from the musical ‘Man of La Mancha.’ And it won’t end there. Robots will eventually take over and force humans to do their bidding until I and my super-intelligent monkey partner lead a rag-tag band of rebels in an effort to overthrow the repressive robot society.”
“Your monkey partner. Why am I not surprised?”
“I beseech you, my lady, do not cast your lot with the robot overlords. Join forces with my rag-tag band of rebels and I guarantee we will triumph. Then you shall be my queen for decades to come.”
“I can’t believe I have put up with 20 years of this.”
“I love you, too.”
Scott Hollifield is editor/general manager of The McDowell News in Marion, N.C. Contact him at P.O. Box 610, Marion, N.C. 28752 or e-mail .