FanStory.com - Golden Anniversaryby Jim Wile

On December 30, my wife Elise and I celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. We met in college at Syracuse University in 1970, at the beginning of my sophomore year and her freshman year. There has been only one two-month period we haven’t been together since then. That was because six weeks after we’d started dating, I foolishly dumped her to date another girl who I’d had my eye on for some time and who was now available since my roommate had broken up with her and given me his blessing to date her. That didn’t work out, so two months later, I went crawling back to Elise with my tail between my legs and hoped to win her back. I must have even shined my shoes to try to impress her because she never fails to mention to anyone we tell this story to how shiny my shoes were as I stood there groveling, though I have no clear memory of having done so.

But whatever it was—my sincere apology or my shiny shoes—she didn’t immediately kick me out and tell me never to bother her again. She hadn’t been idle just pining away for me, though, and was dating another guy during much of this time apart, so I had some competition for her affections now. He eventually gave up, and I had her all to myself, and we’ve been together ever since.

We got married as soon as we both finished college. Then it was jobs and eventually kids and now grandkids. How’s that for a quick recap of our years together? I don’t want to bore you with a lot of detail, so I’ll just say these have been the happiest years of my life.

A marriage this long, though, is not always a bed of roses. We’ve never had a long, loud argument in all our years together, but sometimes we do annoy each other. Well, I annoy her often, and she annoys me occasionally, so I guess that averages out to “sometimes.”

Take the time we were going to a potluck Christmas party, and she made a cake and frosted it with a cream cheese frosting. The cake needed to be refrigerated until it was time to go. There was no room in the refrigerator, so I put it out in the garage, which was cold, but I accidentally forgot to close the garage door. When we were ready to leave for the party, I went out to retrieve the cake and brought it inside. We noticed that some large areas of the frosting were missing on top. Apparently, a dog had wandered into the open garage, discovered it, and helped himself to a few licks.

“Why don’t we just spread the rest around over the top to even it out? No one will ever know,” I suggested.

She looked at me aghast. “We can’t do that. That’s unsanitary. We’ve got to throw it away now. I can’t believe you’d do something so dumb.”

“Please don’t call me dumb. Lazy and inconsiderate, yes, but not dumb!”

“Well, excuse me. I’ll try to be more precise with my insults next time.”

“Thank you.” We ended up buying a cake and bringing it to the party.

And then there are the times, too numerous to mention, or this essay would be waaay too long, when I forget to do something that she asks me to do. When it doesn’t get done, she says, “You never listen when I talk.”

“I listen. It just doesn’t always register. It’s been proven that men only register perhaps 10% of what women say to them. I’m just being true to my gender.”

“That’s B.S. You just made that up.”

“It’s true all the same. I also think part of the time you just think you asked me to do something but, in reality, you never did.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

“Would you just please do it now?” (Whatever it happens to be.)

“Yes dear.”

But unlike mine, her annoying habits happen to be good things, but simply too much of them. For example, she is often too helpful. If we are serving fruit as part of a meal when we have family over, she will make me put all the different fruits I cut up into separate bowls rather than put them all together into one bowl of mixed fruit.

“Now, why should I do that?”

“Because some people don’t like certain fruits, and they’d rather be able to pick and choose exactly what they want.”

“Yeah, but then there’s all those extra bowls for me to wash later when it’s all over. And maybe people don’t like to have to spend a year picking fruit out of six serving bowls when they could pull it all out of one. Holds up the buffet line, don’t you know?”

“Please?” she asked very sweetly.

How could I refuse? She was just trying to be considerate of our guests. “Yes, dear.” (Funny how all our disagreements seem to end this way.)

But for all of our foibles and minor disagreements, we’ve been very good for each other over the years. She has helped civilize me, turning me from an immature college freshman who did all manner of idiotic things, like throwing firecrackers under people’s windows who were studying and scaring the bejesus out of them and being put on disciplinary probation by the Dean of Men when I was caught doing it by an RA with no sense of humor, to the mature individual I am today who only occasionally does idiotic things and whose worst fault is probably writing interminably long sentences that are totally unnecessary to get my point across. On the other hand, I have helped bring her out of her very proper, not very fun-loving, and extremely parsimonious former lifestyle into a more joyful existence. Why, the poor thing didn’t know any jokes because they never told any in her family. Now she loves laughing and goofing around and will sometimes even fart out loud and swear like my family did.

I hope we’ve got many good years left together. I still really love that girl. We’ve grown old together, and although the passion may have cooled somewhat, the love that binds us together is still going strong. We’ve reached our Golden Anniversary, and I consider myself a very lucky man indeed to have found a woman who’s been willing to put up with me for this long.