Because at some moment during this 4½- year period of social distancing (at least that’s how many seasons of Downton Abbey we have watched) an idea came to me about how we can make a better tomorrow.
That’s why I’m proposing a set of Coronavirus-inspired wedding vows.
This is no reflection on my own 43-year-marriage, which has endured since I bowled my best game ever on our wedding night and the mayor who performed the ceremony was indicted for corruption and removed from office.
Both of those things actually happened, though I neglected to put that special bowling ball in the freezer to bring out for our first anniversary celebration.
Before getting my proposal, an observation.
Because the common understanding of marriage has changed since we were wed in the most recently passed millennium, I want to make it clear that the change in vows would hold for any marriage, whether it unites husband and wife, husband and husband, wife and wife, half of each, or any combination of letters eventually added to LGBT-QMNOP.
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Oh, and if anybody at the ceremony raises an objections, he or she is to be given a distant and incorrect GPS reading for the reception.
Now to the wedding vows, which will retain much of the traditional form:
“Do you ¬(blank) take this (blank) to be your lawfully wedded (blank), in which first and third blanks contain the names of the two people to be united in marriage.
Nothing special there.
It’s in the crucial middle blank where I would require the word “weirdo” to be inserted.
Granted, it’s a subtle change, but necessary, for a couple of reasons.
First, it follows the full disclosure pattern required in financial transactions, in which financing costs, including interest paid, are added to retail price so the total cost is clearly understood.
And, let’s face it, sooner or later, every partner in every marriage finds something ranging from a nugget to a mother or father lode of weird in the other partner.
Their toes are funny looking; they hiccup if they eat bread too fast; their heads are shaped like malformed melons; hair grows on them somewhere that God didn’t intend; or generations of their family have closely a secret recipe for green bananas and sauerkraut.
Which brings us to the second reason for Coronavirus Vows.
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For any marriage to last, it is not enough to realize they one has married a weirdo; one must also recognize that his or her partner has married one, too. This fact also sometimes explains the continued monthly electronic transfers from the joint checking account to weirdomatch.com.
Even after 43 years, it took the coronavirus shut down to appreciate how the new vows could continue to pay dividends. Because it has only been in the time we have been sardined together that I have discovered a brand of weirdness my wife and I share.
Blessedly, it’s in an area crucial to all marriages - communication. And, as it turns out, we’re well matched, because we’re both bad at it in the same way.
About two weeks into our joint solitary confinement, I began to take note of how often, after hours of sitting together, she would speak to me only after I had risen and walked halfway out of the room.
Or the door.
Or was on the steps leading to the second floor.
Or the steps to the basement.
I recognized her repeated “never minds” as acknowledgment of my bristling.
So, for a time, I returned to the room and politely said “Pardon me, dear?” so I could hear her out.
And I should have stuck with that.
But after a time, I began ignoring her. And because doing so made me feel slightly guilty, I began to seethe. And the seething gave way to muttering words under my breath.
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That, in turn, led me to the revelation that her hearing is much better than mine, which meant I had to adjust my vocabulary.
At this point, it dawned on me that my wife’s husband is annoying - and likely weird — in many other ways.
Often after she has politely asked that bring back from upstairs or downstairs - whenever he goes there — he nonetheless returns either empty-handed or carrying something she didn’t ask for instead.
His failure is then followed by lame explanations like: “After I move the laundry from the washer to the dryer and cleaned the dryer vent - none of which I had planned to do - I forget to bring up the roll of paper towels.”
All of which means that to him, multi-tasking is always multi-failing. Which means that tasks can only be assigned to him one at a time. And while doing so may make him more irritable, it doesn’t make her requests any less reasonable or necessary.
And then there is his stumbling around in the kitchen when they’re in it together.
It usually starts when she has to remind him to wash his hands, then has to get out of his way as he heads for the sink while the door of the freezer is open because she’s pulling something out of it.
This causes him to duck his head, at which point the two of them nearly always nearly butt heads or - if the point of contact is lower, head-butts, assuming that’s the proper term.
And because the awkwardness usually sends him fleeing in embarrassment, he’s half way out of the room by the time she remembers to parcel out another solitary request of the sort he might actually be able to handle.
You get the picture, right?
But what you might not grasp is the fuller vision of marriage that flows from the Coronavirus Vows.
Because it’s only years even after their hormones have disappeared and couple has snuggled at night like tarnished antique silver spoons in red velvet-lined box, that the culminating moment of their marriage arrives.
It’s a dreamed-for moment when both come to rest on one another’s last nerve at a place the ancients called Last Nerve-ona.
Keep up that social distancing, my friends.
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