At what point after the wedding date do people finally stop asking "So, how's married life?!"
Honestly, what do they expect us to say?
"Well, quite frankly, I'm sorry I ever got myself into this."
"There aren't nearly as many breakfast trays in bed as I'd believed there would be, but all in all, I suppose it's not that bad."
It's really taxing to keep coming up with clever, witty answers to this. That's what people expect when they ask this. They don't want you to simply say, "It's fine," or, "No complaints." They're hoping for complaints. Or at least some light strife.
These queries, I find, come most often from other married people, which is the strangest part. I keep wanting to say, "Well, YOU'RE married, you already know how married life is."
For the most part, this cross-examination seems to come from people I don't see often, such as various friends or co-workers of my spouse, which is fine. I understand the concept of small talk among people who don't know each other well. At least they're not asking me about babies, which, at the first marriage-go-round, started AT the reception.
But sometimes these investigations are also conducted by people who know full well that I was married previously. Yet they ask with a tone that suggests they're waiting for me to delve into a full discourse on how I had absolutely no idea that marriage could be so wonderful / happy / stressful / fucking annoying / crazy, or whatever other adjectives they might be hoping or expecting to hear.
Granted, comparing my two experiences in this faction of life would be something like comparing apples and monster trucks, but married life, if described in the general sense, can usually be put into the same common description - if you're a married person, you already know that there are little annoyances, and joy filled moments, and laundry to be done, and dishwashers to be emptied, and the like, and that overall, it's a decent experience.
Anything beyond that, people generally aren't going to ask about (or necessarily want to hear about), so isn't the common, implied description of "married life" enough to negate the question entirely? I believe every sitcom for the last 60 years has covered what married life is like.
So, how's married life? Well, my definitive answer is this: NASCAR.
Married life must be pretty good because having NASCAR on the TV doesn't annoy me (much), which is something I never thought I would say. I'm not saying I love it. But it doesn't annoy me. And if I can put up with NASCAR, well, I should be able to put up with nearly anything.
We're a hockey family, first and foremost. The NHLPA lockout was just the worst. There was no hockey for 3 1/2 months where there should have been hockey. A short (yet unbelievable!) season, and then 3 more months of no hockey. It's been just boring, with no sport to watch. But there's always NASCAR. And I mean that quite literally. There is always NASCAR.
It's the longest "season" in sports, and I'm using "sports" in a very loose sense here, as I recognize fully that NASCAR is not, in fact, a sport (this is, admittedly, a marital point of contention). From mid-February to mid-November and with 2-3 races per weekend, I truly mean it is ALWAYS friggin' on.
I've learned a lot more about racing than I ever expected. I've really never had much interest in watching 40+ cars make eight left-hand turns a minute for 2 1/2 hours. But one of the corporate names that puts food on the table is on two of those cars, and appears during the commercials, so I learned pretty early on that this was something I was going to have to, at least, tolerate.
I've tried to force myself to tolerate a sport before. Football. I tried to watch it. I tried to learn the rules. A few of them stuck but for the most part, I still don't get it. Not because I'm a "dopey girl" or I can't grasp it. I could become an expert if I wanted to. But I don't. It's painfully boring to me and I have no interest in learning any more about it. I don't even like hearing people talk about it. Which is the same thing I'm sure I once said about NASCAR.
And what I've learned is that NASCAR annoys me (and bores me) far less than football does, which is an obvious indicator of just how much I dislike football.
Football might have a little something going for it if there were crashes and smoke, but there aren't, so I have little use for it.
Even more unimaginable to me, that I would come to have NASCAR put on my television and not complain about it (much) is the fact that I'm being taken for the first time this weekend to a real, live race.
I don't know if I'm going to like it, hate it, love it or merely tolerate it. See at home, I can turn the channel (when he leaves the room) to something else, something decidedly more interesting, like the mating of Bulgarian tree weevils.
What happens after the first 5 laps when alternative entertainment isn't available? Do you just keep watching them make circles. Or, ovals, as it were?
"Holy shit, look, he turned left again! Oh my god, WOW, so did the guy behind him! It's like they KNOW!"
I receive terribly filthy looks every time I make a joke like that. I still don't know why.
I'm still trying to match up the names with the cars. Not because I actually care who drives what, but because I'm tired of the looks I get when I ask who won, M&Ms or Diet Mountain Dew. It's a stupid question in and of itself because Diet Mountain Dew* never wins.
(I've just made an inside joke relating to NASCAR and that scares me)
Sunday mornings in our home have included clockwork-like declarations that he has made his online NASCAR Sprint Cup Fantasy pick for the week.
"I made my NASCAR pick."
"Who did you pick this week?"
"Joey Lagano."
*blink* *stare*
"Home Depot, honey."
"Oh ok, good."
I didn't know that until just now. I had to look that up for the sake of the joke. I know who drives Diet Mountain Dew, 5 Hour Energy, Go Daddy and possibly M&Ms. That's it.
Oh, and Target. I know the Target car because I thought it was hilarious that it happened to be the Target car that crashed the hell into the jet dryer truck and blew it up at Daytona last year.
In Soviet Russia, and in Daytona, you don't hit target. Target hit YOU.
That was probably the moment I knew that I could tolerate this silly-ass business, if I absolutely had to. Sure it's a little boring but once in awhile a tiny Columbian man driving a car with a huge bullseye on the hood might crash straight into a truck full of jet fuel.
I don't like that NASCAR is spelled with "all caps". You know what should be spelled in "all caps"? HOCKEY. Because any sport where 12 guys are paid to chase each other on skates and beat the living crap out of one another should certainly employ capital letters, exclusively. "Shut up, can't you see I'm watching HOCKEY?"
Nascar gets to be "NASCAR" because it isn't a word. It stands for something. Non-Athletic Sport Created Around Rednecks, or something of that nature, I'm not completely sure.
I reserve the right to joke about it all I want (because, well, it's Nascar), but overall, I find it doesn't honestly bother me. It's not my thing, and normally I enjoy a Sunday afternoon siesta if races are on, but he likes it, so who am I to say anything about it. Clearly, it's a part of my home. And that's fine. Actually, it's more than fine because at least it's not football. I know I have things that he doesn't necessarily care about. But that's what you do. You respect the other person's interests and you give them space to enjoy it. Sometimes they might invite you to participate in their interest and you do it because that's just what you do for each other. No question about it. You DON'T put them down for liking something that you don't and you don't refuse opportunities to join them, because one day you will want them to join you in something, too. I'm lucky to have the type of spouse that understands this as well. He does things with me all the time that aren't necessarily his idea. That's just how it works.
You're a team. A partnership. Their name is sponsoring your car for life, and vice versa. That's the person that's always there when you have to pit for a tire change. And you're the one waiting in their pit, no matter what they need. Sometimes you crash into things (especially me... I'm so clumsy I should have a Go Daddy** decal on my ass - that was another inside joke, and a damn funny one too), and sometimes you need some new parts, but in the end, you make the necessary repairs and move on to the next race.
"How's married life?"
NASCAR, that's how.
-kc
Cliff Notes:
* Diet Mountain Dew - that car is driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr. who has won exactly 4 races over the last 3 Presidential Terms.
** Go Daddy - that car is "driven" by Danica Patrick, who, well...
