Let's Talk For A Moment About What A Paranoid Freaky Freak I Am!
Yesterday was my husband's 29th birthday. It was celebrated appropriately with much presents and ice cream and scribbled love notes from the girls. However, the real celebration was an internal one. You see, a few months ago when Ammon and I were talking about the forbidding closeness of the big 3-0, he mentioned that he had never really thought about his future. When I asked him why, he told me that he had always assumed he would die when he was 28. Since we were having this conversation when he WAS 28, I had to be revived with smelling salts before we could continue.
Apparently he had to write his obituary for a high school English class (by the way, what the heck? What kind of sick-o teacher was THAT?) and he wrote that he died in a single-car crash at age 28. I guess he kind of internalized it and never thought about what having kids or growing older would be like. Anyway, I FREAKED OUT.
Was this some sort of personal revelation he had? Did he somehow know instinctively that he was destined to perish at the tender age of 28? Pretty much any time I thought about it in the months leading up to his 29th birthday I had a minor panic attack that required deep breathing and chocolate to recover from.
Finally, the blessed celebration of his birth was only weeks away, then days, then hours... At 10 pm on the day before his birthday, we were only 2 hours away from him officially surviving his 28th year. We were pretty much home free! He was about to run to the store because we needed... um... fine, we needed condoms, ok? We needed condoms, and he figured it was important enough to go to the store at 10 pm. He's a guy, what do you expect? Keys in his hand, shoes on his feet, he kissed me goodbye and walked toward the door to leave. And that's when I remembered it... The eager fairies in Sleeping Beauty took her back to the palace on the eve of her 16th birthday, because they figured they had made it! But of course they hadn't, there was a spindle in the attic and she pricked her finger and DIED. Or slept, whatever, the point is they were FOOLISH and COULDN'T WAIT THE EXTRA FEW HOURS AFTER WAITING SIXTEEN YEARS. And the mean witch won.
Needless to say, I suddenly clutched desperately at my husband's shirt and told him that if he went out he would DIE and we had been SO CLOSE! He backed away from me slowly, murmuring calm, soothing words, and carefully placed his keys on the counter where I could see them.
"I won't go, ok? Everything is fine, I'm not going to die" he told me, as I hyperventilated and trembled, hunched over on the couch. He sat next to me, patting my back and I'm sure he was probably thinking that maybe he should go get in that single-car wreck so he wouldn't have to live a lifetime of talking me out of the bizarro crazy land I live in. But he DIDN'T die and now he's 29 and everything is ok! We can now grow old together in peace. When we're 80 we'll walk down the street holding hands and people will say fondly, "Oh look- there goes Old Lady Crazy and Old Man Should Have Died But Didn't, aren't they the cutest little couple?" The future is full of possibilities!
Apparently he had to write his obituary for a high school English class (by the way, what the heck? What kind of sick-o teacher was THAT?) and he wrote that he died in a single-car crash at age 28. I guess he kind of internalized it and never thought about what having kids or growing older would be like. Anyway, I FREAKED OUT.
Was this some sort of personal revelation he had? Did he somehow know instinctively that he was destined to perish at the tender age of 28? Pretty much any time I thought about it in the months leading up to his 29th birthday I had a minor panic attack that required deep breathing and chocolate to recover from.
Finally, the blessed celebration of his birth was only weeks away, then days, then hours... At 10 pm on the day before his birthday, we were only 2 hours away from him officially surviving his 28th year. We were pretty much home free! He was about to run to the store because we needed... um... fine, we needed condoms, ok? We needed condoms, and he figured it was important enough to go to the store at 10 pm. He's a guy, what do you expect? Keys in his hand, shoes on his feet, he kissed me goodbye and walked toward the door to leave. And that's when I remembered it... The eager fairies in Sleeping Beauty took her back to the palace on the eve of her 16th birthday, because they figured they had made it! But of course they hadn't, there was a spindle in the attic and she pricked her finger and DIED. Or slept, whatever, the point is they were FOOLISH and COULDN'T WAIT THE EXTRA FEW HOURS AFTER WAITING SIXTEEN YEARS. And the mean witch won.
Needless to say, I suddenly clutched desperately at my husband's shirt and told him that if he went out he would DIE and we had been SO CLOSE! He backed away from me slowly, murmuring calm, soothing words, and carefully placed his keys on the counter where I could see them.
"I won't go, ok? Everything is fine, I'm not going to die" he told me, as I hyperventilated and trembled, hunched over on the couch. He sat next to me, patting my back and I'm sure he was probably thinking that maybe he should go get in that single-car wreck so he wouldn't have to live a lifetime of talking me out of the bizarro crazy land I live in. But he DIDN'T die and now he's 29 and everything is ok! We can now grow old together in peace. When we're 80 we'll walk down the street holding hands and people will say fondly, "Oh look- there goes Old Lady Crazy and Old Man Should Have Died But Didn't, aren't they the cutest little couple?" The future is full of possibilities!
July 14, 2005