We're All Married To The Same *#$%&!* Guy

Last weekend I was visiting an old friend in Vancouver. As we sat up late into the night, gabbing and drinking tea, we exchanged news about our ever-advancing adventures as halves of long-married couples. Years ago, some members of the old Herbert gang gathered for a wee reunion--this was after most of us had moved away. Someone observed that from among the friends her kids hung out with, most had divorced parents. We looked around the circle--no one was divorced (yet). It made us reflect. It still does for me. Not that I think we had anything necessarily stellar to work with. Perhaps we were just lucky, or maybe we were unadventurous and felt it was just too much work to start over from scratch. Or perhaps we were able to hang onto our senses of humour.

Back to my weekend with Stephanie. We regaled ourselves with husband tales. Steph has been married to Brian for more years than Jack and I have been together. As we roared with laughter at their spousal antics, during one of our more lucid moments between gasping guffaws, we realized that our narratives were ominously similar. Brian and Jack might have been clones of one another, so great were the similarities in the stories.

As we cast our minds to the long-married couples we knew well, many of whom had lived in Herbert at one time or another (Steph and Brian are honorary Herbertians--they've been friends with certain former inmates and extended families thereof for years), we realized that the men shared many characteristics--and those were the ones informing the stories we were sharing--stories of how these guys drove us nuts with their bizarre behaviors and quirks and how, by laughing at these, we could avoid killing them and going to prison for the rest of our lives.

Back when Roseanne was surnamed Barr, was a stand-up comedian, and was funny, she famously quipped, "Well, we're all married to the same *#$%&!* guy!" As Steph and I exchanged stories about husbands, we realized that this, in our observation at least, is a truism. And, just as women of a certain age (menopausal and post-) display certain characteristics, men of the same certain age appear to intensify their previous and quirky ways. In short, while women get better with age, men (long-married ones, at any rate) just get weirder. And more similar. Steph insists that this strange congruity among older married males means they are morphing into the Borg, and our resistance maybe futile (although that won't stop any post-menopausal women we know).

Instead of sobering us with its looming Trekkie homogeneity, we once more burst into laughter at the absurdity of married men as the Borg. After all, who would find their synthetic components when they misplaced them? Who would ask for and then give them directions back to the Delta Quadrant? Who would tidy up the Unicomplex? (All those cubes!). Back to our laughter at this loonie (but perhaps a wee bit real?) proposition--because maybe it is laughter that keeps people married. While I am sure there are many more factors in such a complex issue, for me, it comes back to a sense of humour. The ability to laugh at one's partner (and perhaps, just perhaps at ourselves, although we all know that partners are far more laugh-worthy) includes the capacity to put things into perspective: Don't sweat the little stuff--just see what bits are funny. Don't yell--laugh instead. Don't act like the world is about to fall apart--even if it is, what good can you do by running around flapping your arms in the air like a chicken? (Or like Joe at the sight of blood?)

No, far better to mine the situation for comedic gems. After all, most of us would rather laugh than cry. For laughter is the purview of children--or should be, at any rate. Children laugh at just about anything. Think about what your kids found hilarious when they were younger--all those elephant jokes and "Mother! Mother!" chestnuts. The dumber (and grosser in the case of boys), the funnier. So, as my febrile mind darts about for connections, I think, perhaps we are drawn to laughter as a way to touch base with our inner child (the good one--not that tiresome little new-age brat that whines incessantly about past slights). The good inner child is the one who splashes in puddles, chases beetles, stops to watch the worms wriggle on the rain-soaked sidewalk, runs because it's fun, sees adventure around every corner. THAT is the inner child we all need to become from time to time. And perhaps, just perhaps seeing the whimsy in a situation helps us get there. Which, in turn, refreshes us for the daunting task of living adult lives.

Woody Allen once said, "When you do comedy, you are not sitting at the grownups' table." While Woody's inner child (and outer adult) has taken him down some questionable roads over the years, here he has a point. Think about all those extended family dinners--which table was having more fun? Where would we have rather been sitting?

Finding the funny also helps us stay in touch with our young children (and now grandchildren) so we can share the odd, absurd, goofy, bizarre things kids relate to so viscerally. Perhaps, just perhaps we adults have lost some of our facility in this area, just as we've lost hearing, flexibility, hair, net worth, or lightheartedness. Perhaps the burden of years has worn this away. If so, all the more reason to pick it up, dust it off, and take it out for a walk from time to time.

I remember, years ago, a group of young moms gathered at someone's house. We were discussing marriage, intimacy, men and women--all that relationship stuff that ladies love to talk about. Dee, balancing a cup on her knee, spoke. "You know," she said, stirring the coffee, "Sometimes when I wake up in the morning and look over at Rollie, I think to myself, `Gee, I'm so lucky to have such a fantastic, wonderful husband.' And sometimes when I wake up in the morning and look over at him, I just want to smash his face in." Smiling, she sipped her coffee.

There was a moment of silence, and the we all roared with laughter, for we knew exactly what she meant. Not that we'd ever smash in our spouse's face (no matter how tempted we might be), or maybe even that we thought he was so great in the first place (although we did marry the guy). But those wildly veering sentiments of extravagant love and the dismay of "Oh my God--who is this doofus I married anyway?" were those we all shared. And Dee had spoken them.

But back to my weekend with Steph. Over our days together, we covered a variety of areas that appeared to form a primer for living with the aging male, specifically the aging male boomer, for our generation has inserted its own particular spins on everything, including getting old. While in some ways we are distressingly (to us AND them) like our parents' and grandparents' generations, we do display idiosyncrasies of our own. And while we may have to trust people over thirty at this point in our lives (after all, we've got KIDS over thirty), we still have problems with those in authority and anyone thirty years OLDER than we are. (Jerry Rubin may be dead, but his aphorism lives on).

Steph and I narrowed the primer down to a few main themes--after all, we had only a weekend. Our primer, as it has emerged, is a work in progress, like life, and doubtless many more themes will materialise, like those worms that litter the sidewalk after a hard rain. And, no doubt readers will think of more themes--and I encourage you to share them--after all, this is also a collective work as well as progressive. Just like living with men has always worked better as a collective enterprise (women sharing stories) and progressive (jury's still out on that one!) process.

Here are some of the themes we came up with--these will be discussed in more detail later (see future blog entry):

1) Male hair migrates 2) Control (or the illusion of it) must be maintained 3) Who'll get Dad if Mom goes first? 4) The aging male brain [also know as "The Fog of Ignore"] 5) You're not getting better--you're getting weirder.

As I said, these are merely the few we touched upon during our very fun weekend. We had a great time, and are now refreshed and ready to keep living with these guys. There are certainly other themes we didn't get to--again, those of you who have more, please suggest them, along with illustrative examples.

What has all this to do with raising four boys, you ask? Well, in a nutshell, it's about survival. I'm still alive, Jack's still alive, the boys are still alive, and we're all relatively sane (except for maybe Jack). Humour played a big role in dragging us through some pretty dense thickets and fairly mucky ditches over the years. Humour parodied Scarlett O'Hara's maxim of "After all, tomorrow is another day!" in a way so as to take the terror out of it. It was humour shared with others that helped us realize we were all living in the same world, suffering similar difficulties, experiencing parallel triumphs, raising collateral kids, and married to the same *#$%&!* guy.

Mordecai Richler said that "Humor, after all, is a very serious business." That's good, because it has a big job, and has to do it while appearing not to, for once the underpinnings of humour are examined, it's no longer funny. Try explaining a joke, and you will understand this.

So cherish your inner comedian, your interior gag-writer, your hidden humorist. Trot her or him out regularly. By this time in our lives, those intrinsic funny guys need as much air as they can get. Some of them may be gasping for breath as we speak. Your children (and grandchildren) will thank you.

Or they will think you are just being lame. In either case, as long as someone gets a laugh, meagre though it may be, it's better than crying. As the Bible says (sort of), "Instead of cursing the darkness, or even lighting a candle (after all, you may not have a match!), just tell a joke!"

(The above is a rather free translation...)

(Note to all men reading this: As you roll your eyes and snort to yourselves, "Well, we could say a thing or two about living with WOMEN!", I suggest you get your own blog...)