Road Apples
July 14, 2008

Minds in sync ... sort of

By Tim Sanders

Often I’ve been asked, "Tim, what’s the secret to a long, happy marriage?" Well, never one to admit ignorance, I’ve done a lot of research on that topic. What I’ve found is that it requires teamwork. If you look at successful husband-and-wife teams throughout history, you will find that those teams always shared common interests. And those common interests drew those couples together as the years passed, until at last they seemed to anticipate each other’s words, and even each other’s thoughts.

Consider, if you will, Pierre and Marie Curie, who in 1898 looked at each other and said, simultaneously, "FORGET RADIUM, WE NEED INDOOR PLUMBING!" It was two minds working in tandem, melded into one. Other successful couples come to mind, including Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Ernest and Julie O’Gallo, and of course Thomas and Weezie Jefferson. These examples clearly show that husbands and wives can successfully withstand the severe thunderstorms and accompanying gale-force winds that life’s warm, moist low pressure system produces when it collides with the cold, Canadian air mass of circumstance and threatens the little trailer park of marital bliss. If I could think of any other weather metaphors, I could go into more detail. Suffice it to say that marital longevity has something to do with taking shelter under the mattress of shared interests in the central room of mutual respect, far away from the dangerous windows of discord.

So I can anticipate your next question, which would be whether my wife and I share interests in a deep, meaningful way, and if we do then when and where did we first recognize those shared interests? And my answer would be yes, in 1967 in a little red Corvair. One starry evening I turned to her and asked, "How would you feel if I were to tell you that some day my name and yours will be the same?" It was an old line from the 1966 hit song "Bus Stop" by the Hollies, and I’d always admired it. Her response still echoes down those empty corridors between my ears. She looked at me sweetly, eyes sparkling, and replied: "Well, if your college buddies don’t mind calling you Marilyn, I suppose it’s all right with me." Right then and there I realized what we had in common; we were both idiots. That shared idiocy meant a lot, and after knowing each other for a scant two-and-a-half months, Marilyn and I were married. I was relieved to learn she’d only been kidding about the name thing. My friends continued to call me what they’d always called me–Doofus.

Now, granted, Marilyn and I don’t share an interest in everything. She likes shopping, for example. I would rather have my tongue shellacked than go shopping. I like football, and she still believes that the game involves innings and “mallets.” I like mushrooms, she hates them because "they’re fungi." She likes to salt her watermelon ... after she slices it, of course. I believe that one of the cardinal rules of nature is that you should never salt a fruit unless it is part of some terrorist interrogation procedure. She likes watching reruns of "The Waltons," while I’d prefer hitting myself in the head with a ball-peen hammer. I like watching reruns of "The Twilight Zone," while she ... well, she’d probably prefer hitting me in the head with a ball-peen hammer, too.

But despite those minor differences, there are times when we think as one. By which I mean as one person. Here is an example:

On the evening of July 4th Marilyn and I watched the Independence Day celebration in Washington D.C. On TV, we watched it. During the fireworks display, which illuminated the Capitol and the Washington Monument, the Marine Band played John Phillips Sousa’s stirring march, "The Stars and Stripes Forever." If you are unfamiliar with the tune, it is the one which contains the following inspiring lyrics:


Be kind to your web-footed friends,
For a duck may be somebody’s mother.
Be kind to your friends in the swamp,
Where the weather is very, very wet ... etc.


So later that evening we were in the kitchen. I was at the table, pretending to be busy doing something or other so as to avoid helping Marilyn with the dishes. As she cleaned the counter top, she was humming the Stars and Stripes tune:


"Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da [pause]
dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, de, daa, daa ... ”


Of course the tune had been going through my head, too. And being the kind of person who loves and appreciates good music just as much as his wife does, I began to hum along.

All right, so I didn’t hum. What I did was, I clucked like a chicken. It was by no means a disrespectful cluck, only a proud, joyous, patriotic cluck.


"Bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk [pause]
bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk de bawwk, bawwk.”


And almost immediately Marilyn began clucking, too. She clucked the melody with her own little "buk, buk, buk," and I chimed in on the after-beats with my highly stylized "BAWK, BAWK." It was very moving. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t dancing wildy around the kitchen like a pair of syncopated Rhode Island Reds on a hot plate. No, we were dignified about it, and didn’t hook our thumbs under our arms and start flapping until the march was almost over.

Our son David came into the kitchen as we put the final flourishes on our production. He’d heard the sounds of poultry in the kitchen, and wondered if we were all right. We told him we were, and added that one day, when he had a wife of his own, he’d understand.

I tell you this not to boast about our musical ability, but only to illustrate how, even when two people disagree on a few thousand minor issues, if they share that all important quality of idiocy, their marriage can last for a very long time.
Or at least, as Marilyn says, it will seem that way.