I've got an anniversary coming up in a couple of weeks. So, to prepare for the festivities, I went looking for a card today. What a miserable damned experience that was.
I went browsing through the cards, looking for something genuine. Something from the heart, something that I might have written myself. Smartassed, but sweet. Old and bitter, but not in a bad way. Lazy, shiftless, virtually unemployable, unshaven, unkempt, and covered in cheese doodle dust, but lovable. And horny. Very, very horny. That's the angle I was shooting for.
But is that the sort of card I got? No. Decidedly not. Because, as married men well know, there are only two kinds of anniversary cards that a guy can choose from. The first is for the Bible-thumping fundy crowd. They've all got pictures with rays of light shining through stormclouds, or faded roses in grandma vases, with fancy borders and squiggly flourishes on the lettering. And inside, they all say Shakespeare like:
'My dearest beloved --
As we prepare to celebrate the sacred covenant we share,
I swear, as diapered-up baby Jesus is my witness, I shall love you
Until the very end of time itself.
Or until armageddon, if it be God's will
And then all bets are off, so sayeth the Lord.
Blessed be our matrimonial bed,
Your husband.'
Now, I can't give that card to my wife. Not with a straight face, anyway. Yes, I was looking for a 'funny card', but not that kind of funny. And if she didn't realize that it's meant ironically, it'd scare the diapered-up baby bejeesus out of her. So those cards were no good.
The other kind of card may be even worse. Sure, they're meant to be funny and playful, but instead they're simply ridiculous. They're filled with cartoony little pictures of dogs or bears or reticulated lemurs or some other goofy animal, and they represent the happy couple doing crap that the wife and I never do -- taking long walks, going to the theater, hiking together... yeah, right.
Who does that Shakespeare? Hiking? Honky, please. I get winded fishing the last bit of Cherry Garcia out of the Ben and Jerry's carton. Like I'm going to walk up a mountain, just for fun. You greeting card people are out of your frigging envelopes.
Worse than that, though, is the poem that inevitably accompanies the silly pictures. It's always hacky and sappy and completely inappropriate. I'm not handing my wife something that reads:
'Honey, we've been through thick and through thin;
We'll get in the car and we'll go for a spin!
You stick by me, even with all of my flaws --
And unlike our remote, our love has no 'pause'!
When I first met you, dear, I couldn't fathom my luck,
And now that we're hitched, well, I guess that you're stuck!
We've made it together, through one more year;
'Cause we're a great couple, and you're a peach, dear!
And through all of this, we're doing just fine --
Because I'm always yours, and you're always mine!'
Look, I love her dearly, but that's just stupid. Nobody talks like that -- not to their wife, not to their husband, not to their drooling baby childlets. It's just asinine.
But, I had to get a card, and the fundy crap was just too goddamned scary, so I did the best I could. I actually bought the card I just described, and took a few... creative liberties. It's still not quite what I was looking for, but my version's a vast improvement. Here's the text:
'Honey, we've been through thick and through thin;
We'll get in the car and we'll go for a spin!
'Cause I don't bag other chicks, and you don't bang other men!
You stick by me, even with all of my flaws --
And unlike our remote, our love has no 'pause'!
But I'm still not spending Christmas with the jackassed in-laws!
When I first met you, dear, I couldn't fathom my luck,
And now that we're hitched, well, I guess that you're stuck!
<Verse exceeds your moral tolerance>
We've made it together, through one more year;
'Cause we're a great couple, and you're a peach, dear!
Now you get the lube, and I'll grab the beer!
And through all of this, we're doing just fine --
Because I'm always yours, and you're always mine!
Now drop those pants, baby; let's do sixty-nine!'
Much better. I am so getting laid on my anniversary now. Hell, I may not even need the chocolate and flowers. See what happens when you 'care enough to send the very best'?
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