It was Friday evening and the game was scheduled for Sunday afternoon. It was to be the Arena Football League championship game, and I had completely forgotten that it was going to take place nearby. Arena football being slightly more popular than curling in Florida, we were able to get tickets. Having never seen an Arena League contest, I was game for a new experience. I checked my calendar (“hey Cheryl, are we doing anything on Sunday”), and it turned out I was free, so we went. Picture an indoor football game on a field the size of a hockey rink and set to the WWE (World Wrestling “Entertainment”) soundtrack, and you will have pictured an Arena League game. I was going to my first game, and it was the championship game no less! From the get go, there was an air of importance to the game, but I couldn’t help thinking that it had all the significance of the Junior College Basketball championship. Come on, how many people can you find that can name a player? How many can name the coach? I know people at work that don’t even like football, but they can name the local NFL team’s coach. Ask someone who the arena team’s coach is and you’ll be lucky to get a blank stare of befuddlement.

With that kind of build-up, you’d think I didn’t have a good time. Actually, it was just the opposite. The game was enhanced by a classic sporting event atmosphere. The arena seemed nearly sold out. The arena was producing more beer than the Rocky Mountain springs of Golden, Colorado, and possessed all the drunken revelry that goes with it. Seriously, it was great. Fans bloodied from sitting too close to the action were helped backstage, liquored up fans inoculated against an outbreak of empathy were throwing things at people with better seats, there were few T.V. time outs (as near as I could tell), and the game play was fast paced. Can you say “sports fan nirvana”? What was the icing on the cake? The local team won. It’s hard not to like a winner, unless it’s the other team.

You and your wife are sharing a moment of matrimonial intimacy in the bathroom. This is not the honeymoon kind of intimacy that people fantasize about. No, this is the mundane, day to day intimacy that is found in the real world. Your wife is in front of you, bent over the sink, brushing her teeth. Her face is visible only because of the mirror. It strikes you that this is what it really means to be married to someone. You share everything, even those mundane moments in front of the sink.

She starts brushing her tongue and suddenly I laugh. Brushing your tongue is inherently funny, but like any joke you’ve heard over and over again, I’ve seen it too many times to chuckle. My mind made an odd connection and I just had to laugh at the thought.

“What is it?”, she asks.
“I don’t think you really want to know.”

She resumes her brushing and I laugh again.

“You know you’re going to have to tell me now.”
“Well, you were brushing your tongue and I couldn’t help thinking your tongue looked like the panting of any eager puppy.”

We both start to chuckle.

“Get out of the bathroom if you are going to make me laugh. I want to finish and go to bed.”
“O.K., I’ll stop.”

She pauses and looks up at me in the mirror. I give her my best poker face. She starts brushing again, her face down so she can’t see my face.

In a rapid cadence, I begin a puppy pant. “Heh.. heh…heh…”

She has to stop brushing because her composure has broken like glass on a tile floor. We both giggle like a couple of school kids who’ve stayed up past their bed time.

This is the couple that we are. No one gets to see this couple but us. It is what it means to me to be married – two people enjoying the otherwise routine moments in life.

I love my wife. I love my life.