I Used a Slide Rule to Calculate How Many Years We’d Been Married

My honey-do list had become a year longer.

It was our anniversary, so we ate inside the fast-food restaurant.

My wife deserved the royal treatment. I’ve seen people do some insanely courageous things. My wife has done them throughout our married life. She’s an excellent cook. I wasn’t born to cook. I was born to express my gratitude to those who cook for me. She even reminds me of when I’m due to trim my nose hair. My happy place is wherever she is.

My high school recently mailed me my old slide rule. The school had replaced it with a newfangled contraption called an abacus. That signaled the end of our Slide Rule Users Will Save the World Club. No more monthly dues. Yay!

The timing was perfect. I used the ancient slide rule to determine how many years my wife and I had been married.

My wife fell in love with me because I could say anything in three languages. “Anything.” There, I’ve said it again.

Our wedding was a whoop-de-doo. We couldn’t afford a wedding photographer, so we went with a police sketch artist. The wedding supper was a potluck.

I spoke at a couple of things in Oklahoma and talked with a man outside Woodward, who told me he’d been married for 50 years. Before I could congratulate him, he added, “I’ve been married for 50 years in total to five different women.”

That reminded me of the man who had this to say about finding a wife, “To tell you the truth, I spent my youth looking for the perfect woman. Then one day I met her. She was beautiful, intelligent, generous and kind. She was perfect!”

“Why didn’t you marry her?” I’d asked.

The guy sighed, got a faraway look in his eyes and replied, “The problem was that she was looking for the perfect man.”

I’m not perfect. There isn’t room for perfect people in a marriage.

Before we married, my future wife and I met with Reverend Fick, who was supposed to tell us everything we’d ever need to know about the marriage game.

He told the tale of his brand-new marriage days when he came home to their apartment one day to find that his bride had a big surprise for him. She hadn’t prepared a 5-gallon bucket of creamed celery, but she had washed his beloved smoking pipes in soap and water. She had a smile as big as her head, so happy to do a loving thing for her loving man. That loving man wasn’t that happy to hear of his well-scrubbed pipes. For wooden pipes, water and soap can damage the material and its protective finish. Soaking a briar pipe can cause the wood to expand, which can loosen the stem’s fit or even cause the pipe to crack. It can leave a soapy residue that challenges the flavor of the tobacco. Her deed didn’t take the cake, but it took the cake. His wife had scraped it from the pipe’s bowl. Cake development occurs when a smoker creates a layer of carbon on the walls of the pipe. The carbon lining protects the wood from the burning tobacco’s heat. A thin layer of cake helps protect the briar from the risk of burnout, and helps create a good smoke. He was a cake lover, whether it was in a pipe or on a plate. By planned puffing and strategic smoking, Reverend Fick had created the perfect cake. He didn’t go off the deep end. Instead, he thanked his wife profusely for her kind act and gently asked her never to do that again. He said the story stressed the importance of forgiveness in a marriage.

He said many other things I’ve forgotten, but stories last. There are great lessons hidden within stories. Forgiveness is necessary in lives that are blooper reels.

When we were first wed, my wife told me I was much too important to be bothered by small decisions. She’d handle them, and I’d concentrate my big brain on making momentous decisions. We’ve been married a long time, and we haven’t had a single big decision that required a high-level directive from me.

I have a lot to be thankful for.