Category Archives: Married life

Human relations, Married life

The fine art of Emergency Anniversary Present Finding

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Having taught this to enough people, I figured it’s time to write it down and help the brothers out.

A lot of men have a hard time with anniversary presents for their wives. What the hell does she want? It depends on her, obviously, and one size never fits all. My philosophy is that she doesn’t want something practical, useful or that will go away (wilt, be eaten, etc.). She also doesn’t tend to want something that isn’t specific to her. The money matters a lot less than the thought you put into it, so there are not easy outs. Flowers and candy? Throwing money at the problem. Anyone can go out and buy that. Jewelry? If you have that kind of money and it’s something that would matter mainly to her, and not to just any woman. If you’re celebrating being married to her, she isn’t just any woman. She’s your wife. She’s special. She was better than the rest, and I should hope you still think so.

Sure, tickets to her favorite concert are an option, and those go away, which could be okay. But I cling to the view that something she can keep over the years, and remember what you meant, is most likely to be treasured. Five years from now, none of her friends are going to look at concert tickets, adore them and ask where she got them.

If you have time and are handy, making something is nice. Anything that is unique–that there is only one of, and just for her–sends a very welcome message. Something you already have, in a display you made that adds to it, is a good thing. Some years you just spot the perfect thing. And some years, it’s down to the wire, and damn it, nothing has shown up, no ideas, you’re stuck. You went out and looked at all the usual places. Nada. There isn’t any more time to mess around. This is a dilemma.

When that happens, do this.

You are going to deploy the ultimate weapon: women. You won’t even know any of them, and you don’t care. This is a sure shot. All you have to do is think a little bit beforehand, and cooperate when the time comes. I’m not making this up. I have done this more than once.

First: game face. It shouldn’t be hard for you to look a little frustrated, but don’t look angry frustrated. You’re going to a place where you are somewhat out of your element, and it is important to seem a little vulnerable. Many of us don’t do vulnerable well. You must. Drop your guard. There is something about a vulnerable man that lights up the ‘I must help’ indicators in women like a Christmas tree. It’s one of the greatest reasons to value them as relatives, friends and partners–and there are so many. Not every woman, no given woman all the time, but in the main, most of them most of the time.

Second: use your brain. Look back on the last year of her life and yours together, what was major for her. A big achievement? What all did she do? Think of something to celebrate, to commemorate, something you’re proud of about her. Something where she reached a goal, finished something, conquered something. It can involve you in some way but it should center on her role. Have that stuff in mind, because you’re going to need it.

Next, game face on, go to the kind of place she likes to look around, typically an artwork or craft type of place, small business, no chains. Make sure you go at a time when there are several women in the store, including a female shopkeeper/cashier. Go in, greet the shopkeeper politely, and look around a bit. Wait for her to ask if she can help you find anything. Your finger is on the launch button; push it. Keep wandering sort of aimlessly and dumbly, and say something like: “Well, I’m having trouble. Our anniversary is coming up. I’m really proud of my wife, she’s done a lot this year, and I want to get her something that will celebrate that. I haven’t had any luck finding the right thing.” Don’t be loud, but do not make any effort not to be heard by the other shoppers. Most of all, don’t be embarrassed about it. You want to be the man who just showed that he loves his wife and isn’t one damn bit ashamed of that, doesn’t give a shit who hears him.

Ignition. Now it’s a treasure hunt. The shopkeeper will start to ask you questions. Trust that the other women heard you. What does she like? What did she accomplish or do? What colors does she like? Any flowers or animals or symbols that mean a lot to her? What’s your budget range? Be completely honest. Answer anything and everything. If it’s about what she did, let your pride shine a bit. Before you came in, the shopkeeper was bored and most of the women were just puttering around. Now they have a mission.

See, this is the women’s world. It’s different, and this must be respected. In their world, change is swift and sudden, and they tend to handle it more smoothly than we do. Now the lines between shopkeeper and customer tend to blur, even vanish. The other women are likely to ask you questions. Answer everyone. This is fun for them on a couple of levels. Not only are they helping someone who seems like a very nice man, they have a goal. Their shopping day just got better and you are the cause. They like this.

Now all you have to do is come look at stuff when summoned. They will consider your budget, everything you said. Go around and look at the stuff. Don’t be afraid to say something wouldn’t quite work, but obviously, be polite, as to any volunteer taking time to help a stranger. If it surely wouldn’t work, explain why, so that adds to what they know. Keep checking out things, and in between, you of course keep looking, or making a show of it. You won’t be the one who finds it, but you have to keep trying for appearance’s sake.

Eventually someone will find something suitable, the kind of thing you would never have thought of as fitting, because you do not see the world through your wife’s eyes. Sometimes takes only a few minutes. The women are more likely to see it as she would see it. If you think the thing sends a radically different different message than the woman who found it, it’s fine to say so, but if your helper stands her ground, be prepared. That’s the signal for the other women to come over and weigh in. They will all agree with each other about the interpretation, exactly as custom specifies. At this point, custom and good manners require you to bow to their collective wisdom and agree with them. That’s the debate you should lose, and gracefully–because if that’s how they all see it, you probably just found the perfect gift. One year I was doing this, and one lady found a statuette of a female figure in chrome, head back, holding a platter (spiked for a votive candle) high in the air. I asked: “That looks like the barmaid bringing beer. Is that what I should be saying?” The women gathered around to evaluate the piece and weigh in. They all agreed that it looked very feminine and triumphant and strong, and not like a barmaid. Of course, I followed the script, and accepted their judgment without being grumpy. (At anniversary time, my wife loved it. Later, when I told her the barmaid story, she laughed and laughed. More to the point, she agreed with my helpers, and chided me good-naturedly for the utter, sheer, egregious maleness of my own first impression.)

At some point, they find it, and you know it. Now all there is to do is thank the women for their help, tell them you’re sure your wife will love it, pay for your purchase, and head out. Everyone is happy. You’re bailed out. The shopkeeper did some business and had fun. The other shoppers had fun, and helped a nice guy do something thoughtful. They loved the romance of it, the process of it, the newness and difference.

Not much was asked of you. All you did was show up, say the right things, answer questions, be appreciative and respectful, and pay the cashier.

This is not hard. And it will save your husbandly ass from a big disappointment.

If you blow it at anniversary time, it is now officially your own damn fault.

Adventures, Married life

A treatise on Tri-Cities: what I will and will not miss

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As some of you know, we live in the Tri-Cities (Richland, Kennewick, Pasco) of Washington, and will be moving to Boise, Idaho later this year. We weren’t eager to relocate, but we’re embracing it–kind of a shock for my system, after thirty-nine years in Washington. This has gotten me to thinking about what I will miss and what I won’t.

In Washington (economically dominated by the Seattle region), the stereotype is that Tri-Cities are full of dullness, wind, meth, Republicans, Mormons, Mormon Republicans, nuke-lovers, and Mexicans. To Tri-Cities, of course, Seattle is full of Democrats, hippies, atheists, sneering snobs, junk science anti-nuke kooks, tree huggers, vegans, weed, and so on. Like most stereotypes, all of the above are overblown but with bases in fact. As always, I find myself caught in no-man’s-land between the extremes, finding both of questionable credibility, which is my typical ideological comfort zone on any topic. I’ve lived about the same amount of my life in both regions. When I left Seattle, I didn’t miss that much about it, whereas there’s a fair bit I’ll miss about the Dry Cities.

I will miss:

Great Mexican food. It’s not all good, but enough of it is great, and that meets my needs.

Great neighbors. Except for the idiot who puts up the 12′ lighted cross at Christmas (showing that, in his need to advertise his faith, he has fully missed the point of the holiday), I would take them all with me if I could. Most Tri-Citians really don’t get to know their neighbors, which I consider to be cheating themselves. Home security system? Every one of my neighbors would call 911 at the slightest indication something were wrong. None of them solve mutual concerns with lawyers, even those whose children are lawyers; they come over to talk about it, and we figure something out.

Cheap hydroelectric and nuclear power. We get off very easy.

The option to be in Seattle or Portland in a little over three hours.

A remarkable resiliency and interdependency in crises. The huge fire at Benton City, some years back, was a great example. The Red Cross’s main problem was not helping the few refugees, but trying to figure out how to direct everyone who called in wanting to help. When they could not get through, they drove down to the Red Cross, bringing anything from bundles of clothing to horse trailers. These are a remarkably kind people, and if you had to ride out a rough time, you could not ask for a better place.

High levels of volunteerism even when there isn’t a crisis. For a long time we had a bi-county volunteer center just to find things for them to do. If told they would have to pay for their own training, they paid it. As quiet as this place seems, there’s steel in there. Good example: some time back, the ‘mayor’ of Kennewick led a initiative to build a great play area in the park for kids, which looks a lot like a fort with lots of stuff to climb on and slide down. Contractors willingly donated materials; citizens showed up in dozens with their own tools. It was wonderful. Then some vandal burnt it down one night. The people just went out and built another one, right in the same spot. Not doing so wasn’t even open to question.

Three hundred days of sunshine a year, with just enough cold weather to make me happy. Roads rarely get icy.

Triple-digit temperatures in summer, which toughen you up if they don’t kill you by sunstroke. It truly is a dry heat. Speaking of which, I will miss such a dry climate. You can hang stuff up and it actually dries, which was not the case in Seattle.

Friendly politeness. Whatever faults some here might have, malice is rarely among them. Disabled? You can’t avoid having the door held for you if you try. Even clods who block the shopping aisle smile about it, not realizing that makes it twice as annoying. I have to give them credit for good hearts, anyway.

A live-and-let-live mentality. Whatever your difference is, in Tri-Cities, no one will care about it unless you more or less wad it up and wash their faces in it. If you do that, yeah, you’ll get their opinion. But if you just live your life gay/atheist/pagan/vegan/Raelian/Klingon, no one gives even half a damn what you do. I remember when the porno shop moved in where a rowdy bar closed down. It wasn’t festooned with gaudy signage; it was just there. For a while, a couple of protestors tried standing outside it on the sidewalk; they soon gave up. Whether locals liked it or not, it wasn’t washing everyone’s face in it, thus it should be left alone–if you don’t like that stuff, hey, don’t shop there. The gay bar in east Pasco remains completely unbothered, and has been since I’ve lived here, on the same principle.

Great dental care. I have no idea why, but this area is loaded with quality dentistry and nearly everyone seems happy with it.

Hearing Spanish now and then, and knowing that if I want to practice mine, I can simply go hang out in east Pasco–where I’ll be doubly safe, a) because it’s pretty safe to begin with, and b) because a friendly Anglo speaking Spanish is not an outsider. I don’t like when businesses pander with bilingual signs, but I have no problem with what people want to speak among themselves. If someone has enough English to get by at need, that’s all that concerns me.

Lots of wineries. There are 160 wineries within fifty miles of my office, and many of them earn international recognition. This is wine snob heaven.

Some urban rurality. Just down the hill from me is the proudly proclaimed Tri-City Polo Club, with horse barns on one side of the street, a grange on the other and a small cattle pasture across from both. Only in Tri-Cities. I love it. Going into West Richland (with its famously speed-trappy police force), crossing the Yakima River, a sign orders: DISMOUNT AND LEAD HORSES.

A remarkably good airport in which it is impossible to get lost, and where parking is relatively cheap.

Radcon, at least when I’m not mobility impaired.

Ralph Blair of Tri-City Battery (west Kennewick) and the whole crew of the company–they authentically solve car problems. I don’t know why anyone takes their car to Cheapo Lube when they could have it glanced at by honest professionals for the same cost. Dr. Ronald Schwartz (ear/nose/throat, Richland)–solved a perplexing balance issue for my wife, and was always honest with a great staff. Monica and the staff at the UPS Store (2839 W Kennewick Ave), who have always gone the extra mile. The WSU Master Gardeners at the extension office, an excellent resource allowing us to tap into the best knowledge available concerning things that grow in the ground–this is precisely what the land grant concept was supposed to bring us, and it does.

Living in a city where about five miles of the northern boundary is a park along a river, some of it nearly undeveloped except for a few picnic benches and a nice walking/cycling path. Oh, and the river is about half a mile wide. If you like to sit by a river in complete peace, Kennewick can arrange that. So can Pasco, and so can Richland.

I will not miss:

So much mediocre Mexican food. How can so many people patronize so many crappy places when there are enough great ones handy?

Minimal other ethnic dining, and much of it mediocre. Chinese food here is a joke. The Greek restaurant specializes in ‘Greek style pasta.’ Seriously?

The Hanford mentality of “never complain” and “don’t make waves.” This complacency and silence assures the mediocrity of local municipalities and businesses. You see, the Hanford nuclear site’s main form of employment involves not cleaning up the nuclear waste from the Cold War. This assures that their children will still have jobs not cleaning it up, which will be good for when their grandchildren need jobs not cleaning it up. Much of the work is heavily overpaid and ridiculously bureaucratic. As for not cleaning it up, that’s all blamed on the Department of Energy and unions. Never mind that government money is the area’s economic base; they want government to butt out, and want me to believe that this would create some kind of Nirvana in which they would immediately work themselves out of jobs. Never mind that there has never been a union contract that was not also signed by management. Nope, all the fault of DOE and unions. I’ve long been fond of saying that while I believe we ultimately will need nuclear energy, I hope to the gods they expand its use anywhere but here, because these are the people who made a massive mess during the Cold War here and now are taking the longest possible time cleaning it up. Don’t ever give more responsibility to a business culture in whose best economic interest it is to cause problems and then be inefficient at fixing them. That’s like paying mechanics to break your vehicle, then mill around it doing nothing.

Dust storms. Sometimes this is like living near a giant hair dryer filled with beige talcum powder.

Most of the local vendors one is stuck with. I will feel joy the day I never again have to send money to Waste Management, Sprint, Frontier Communications (they might just be the worst of all), Cascade Natural Gas, DefectivTV, Pemco, the City of Kennewick, and the Kennewick Irrigation District. Some I will actually get to fire, and it will feel good.

Monumental business boneheadedness, such as Richland using some of their best real estate not for a convention center (next to a nice golf course and the river), but for a Winco (discount grocery) and some crappy strip malls. Such as Kennewick building a convention center, wondering why it didn’t thrive, and only then learning that you need hotels near convention centers in order for the concept to work. Such as the Kennewick School District thinking they needed to renovate a whole new building because they were ‘really cramped’.

Meanderthals. You see, Tri-Cities are in the middle of a huge high desert. Without human activity, everywhere but river coasts there would be nothing but sagebrush and sand. As a result, the local mentality does not register that anyone else really exists, let alone is also trying to get to a destination, be they on foot, pushing a grocery cart or behind the wheel. Driving here is very dangerous because one must assume that everyone else thinks there is no one else on the road. Grocery shopping is a pain in the ass, with constant aisle blockages. Walking through the mall is even obstructed, usually by packs of eight people who have decided to have a discussion completely blocking the throughway. Costco is a nightmare. And if you’re crabby about it, no one understands why. A New Yorker transplanted here would be dead of a stroke in one week, unless s/he smoked about six joints before leaving the house.

A terrible medical situation. I have come to believe that, while there are a minority of competent and caring local medical providers, most are here because it’s easier to practice in an area where expectations are so low. I think most of them simply couldn’t make it anywhere that crappy and apathetic didn’t cut it. It’s bad enough that, despite three fully equipped hospitals, a shocking number of Tri-Citians go to Spokane or Seattle for surgery if they value their health. Medical offices have a tendency to hire bored, lazy office personnel who really don’t care. The key to getting decent medical care here is word-of-mouth combined with willingness to shop around–and once you get a decent doctor in a given area, you don’t endanger that.

Racism. Richland used to be a ‘sundown town’ by virtue of its status as a company town–you couldn’t live there unless you worked for Westinghouse, and they generally didn’t hire blacks. Kennewick was worse: it had actual signs at the bridge with Pasco (where most of the rather small African American community lived and still lives) requiring all blacks to be out by sunset. They came down sometime around 1965, but ask any older black Pasconian: they have by no means forgotten, and most of them loathe Kennewick. Considering that some Kennewick neighborhoods still have racially restrictive covenants on paper (though unenforceable), I can’t blame anyone who lived through that time. (The title companies are slowly magic-markering that part out of the covenants, but some persistent irritant found an unexpurgated one.) It’s one thing that there is significant racism here, especially with police very prone to profile Hispanic and black men as potential criminals, but the worst part is the denial of history. Kennewick does its very best to say as little as possible about the covenants and sundown town history, essentially waiting for all the witnesses to die off so they can pretend it never happened. (I bet they think that when a certain local gadfly moves away, he will stop bringing this up all the time. They had best think again. All it will mean now is that even if they wanted to retaliate, they’ll lack the means.) The other racism here has to do with Hispanics (mostly of Mexican heritage, many being US citizens who not only speak native English, but speak less Spanish than I do), and it’s in a sort of sneaky way. When Tri-Citians speak of a “bad area” or “dangerous part of town,” that’s code. It means “has Hispanics.” I once heard east Kennewick described with a straight face as ‘Beirut’–but what the person really meant was ‘has lots of non-white, non-Asian people.’ (And by the way, comparing east Kennewick to Beirut is like comparing the oil you spilled in your garage to the Exxon Valdez.)

Indifference to literacy and reading. The area simply doesn’t read much and doesn’t care much about it.

Indifference to the world at large. Yesterday on the Amazing Race, I watched a fairly Cletus couple try to figure out where the Kalahari Desert was. You could ask 90% of Tri-Citians which continent it was on, and most would guess wrong–and it would be a guess. They don’t know, and they largely don’t care. We have a whole lot of insular ignorance here, and we do little to ameliorate it.

Remarkably stupid speed limits designed purely to raise speed trap revenue. It has nothing to do with safety. Same for school zone lights that operate when there is not a child in sight–it’s just a way to nab people for ‘speeding.’

Lack of a major university campus. Pasco has a relatively blah community college, and at the extreme north of Richland is a branch campus of Washington State University (enrollment less than 1000). A full-dress, sizable university brings with it so much, and that is largely denied to the Tri-Cities. Oh, sure, on average the level of education appears high, but that’s mainly because of all the nuclear engineers working at Hanford and all the Aspies out at Battelle with physics Ph.Ds. In reality, local kids seeking a serious degree mostly leave town, and many of them will never be back unless they’re nuclear engineers or physicists.

Crappy local businesses that continue to succeed simply because they are more habits than enterprises. I could name half a dozen such without effort. Longtime Tri-Citians keep going there. It’s where they’ve always gone, and where they continue to go.

The combined reek from Wallula of the IBP feedlot and the Boise Cascade paper mill. When there’s an inversion, smells like something died. Richland is spared this, but southeast Kennewick sure isn’t.

Finding ways to be short of water despite living next to the confluence of two great rivers (Snake and Columbia). This is like living by the ocean and not being able to get salt for your food, or freezing to death near a big pile of deadfall with a functional lighter on your person.

Boat Race Weekend. Unlimited hydroplane racing (which is strictly limited) is sort of like Nascar on the water. I don’t begrudge it to anyone, but it doesn’t interest me, and turns the place into a madhouse one weekend a year.

Lousy contractors and mechanics. Like the doctors, once you find a good one, you don’t let go. Many consider that they are doing you a favor just by showing up or accepting the job. Many do very shoddy work. Unless you have the ability and will to raise tremendous hell–which will stun them, because everyone else just accepts the shoddy work (“so why can’t you?”)–you will become a do-it-yourselfer simply because you often can do a better job than the so-called professionals. Plus, at least you are likely to show up for your own work. They often won’t.

Having only one independent local bookstore that quietly makes sure that males know they are barely tolerated, without good grace. Your call, Book Worm. It takes a lot to make me avoid a bookstore, but you were up to the challenge.

The look of fear when I mentioned to a serving city employee how corrupt Kennewick’s government was. It told me a lot. I learned a lot about Kennewick’s government when their piping contractor behaved disgracefully on my property and they told me that I’d have to pay to fix everything myself, then their insurance company would decide if I got reimbursed. Kennewick’s citizens tolerate this. Remember when I was telling you that this area will swallow any mediocrity without a complaint, the Hanford mentality? Exhibit A. Guess what, Kennewick. I will move away, but my words will not.

Ridiculous provincialism leading to failure to merge three cities into a combined city with much larger political pull. They all complain that they would lose their ‘unique cultures’. Seriously? Let’s get real: Richland is whiter than Kennewick which is whiter than Pasco. That’s the difference, though you aren’t supposed to put it that way, nor to correlate it with the historic tendency of Richland to look down on Kennewick which looked down on Pasco. Beyond that, there is hardly any difference, but this does ensure three different bureaucracies, three different police forces, and a whole lot of wasted tax money. There is so much that Three Rivers, WA could do united, yet it doesn’t. And it won’t.

Adventures, Married life

Driving from Boise

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I drove down to Idaho’s capital, where we anticipate we will be living before 2013 is out, to visit Deb. She has completed her first week of work at a new job and we miss one another keenly, though we have a plan that depends upon me not just ripping up stakes and moving quite yet.

Boise is a 4.5 hour drive from here, if one wants to avoid falling foul of the Oregon State Police. When you have any tags but Oregon on your car, you very much do not want to make yourself an interesting person to pull over. The trip is mountainous, winding and beautiful. Reunion was joyful and came just in time for us to find a fun Lebanese place in Boise. Tried my limited Arabic on the staff, but none would answer in it. One may take that as a sign that my pronunciation was atrocious, or that they kind of try not to be too conspicuous–I don’t know.

The next day, we wandered around to some specialty stores related to hobbies of mine, which was quite fruitful, then headed to the Basque Block downtown. About the only place in the world with more Basques than Boise, we are told, is Euskadi itself (Spain’s Basque country). Stopped in at one of Boise’s more storied Basque spots, a tiny corner pub named Bar Gernika. (Accent on the second syllable–and yes, the name refers back to Guernica, of Spanish Civil War tragic fame.) I liked my paella and croquetas, and Deb enjoyed her selection as well. Lots of Basque flags there (looks much like a Union Jack but with a green background). Did not try my Spanish there; one suspects it is widely spoken, but as the language of what Basques would consider an oppressor, might be a real bad start with people.

Headed out earlier today, and decided to describe the travel, for those who have never been to this part of the world. A trip from Boise to the Tri-Cities of Washington mostly crosses northeastern Oregon on I-84, which can be formidable in winter even though the summit of the Blue Mountains is only just over 4000′. From Boise to Ontario, OR is fairly flat past croplands and medium-sized towns like Nampa and Caldwell, enjoying Idaho’s 75 mph speed limit. (I could not stop calling the former ‘Nampon’ in my mind. I may one day blurt it out.) At the Oregon line, speed drops to 65, shortly after which comes the climb up to Baker City, and the trucks begin slipping back shortly after crossing from Mountain Time to Pacific Time. Soon one sees the first of many breathtaking vales and valleys, which almost become dull: the majestic turns commonplace. One eyesore: an old lime plant in full decrepitude, looks like a lot of kids go where they would be wiser not to and mess around in the ruins. I guess kids need to do stupid things in order to adventure and learn.

At this point in late winter, the road is clear but the mountains surrounding are still quite snowy where one can see that the sun doesn’t strike directly for long during the day. There is usually a river near the freeway, or a snowy field, or a herd of cattle, often all three. Snow drift barriers are rarely out of sight; these look like fence sections leaning over, and exist to control the heavy drifting of snow–presumably onto the freeway, since most are close to it. North of Baker some miles, a sign announces that you’re crossing the 45th parallel. It feels compelled to explain that this means you are halfway between the Equator and North Pole, which says a lot about the state of geography education in this country. From Baker to La Grande is more very empty and pretty country, where the freeway sides are often far apart and many steep descents and climbs show up. In numerous spots, wide roadside areas advise that one may use them to chain up–indeed, in winter, carrying chains or having traction tires is the law in this stretch of the Blues. Even though it’s in the 40s, the wind at a rest stop is punishingly hard and cold, a reminder of what it’s like to make your living up here.

Past La Grande some miles, one begins to descend out of the Blues, and one sees those signs that are the clearest signs that one is in a mountainous part of the West: RUNAWAY TRUCK RAMP 5 MILES. Other signs set aside areas for trucks to check brakes, give speed guidance based on gross weight, and otherwise make absolutely clear that everyone on the freeway knows the danger. This is when it hits you. If in your rear view mirror (which you should check frequently), you see a semi barreling down on you at what looks to be 90 mph and accelerating, he hasn’t gone crazy or decided to bully cars (as trucks sometimes do, in my experience). He’s lost his brakes, is hoping not to roll his rig before he reaches a runaway ramp, and he can not stop. You can get out of his way, or die. The runaway ramps themselves are steep tracks into the mountainside located at bends which a runaway truck could not hope to survive at those speeds, paved with loose crushed rock (probably a couple of feet deep), to soak up the speed in conjunction with the steep climb up the slope. The first one I passed had numerous ruts, some all the way to the top of the ramp. If you weren’t checking your mirror before seeing that, you would start. Deadman Pass is along this stretch, and it’s not inaptly named. Just a couple months earlier this winter, a busload of Korean exchange students going to Canada from Las Vegas went down a steep embankment at Deadman Pass. Nine fatalities, dozens injured. To stay alive up here, one best look alive.

For my trip, happily, everyone’s brakes were fine. Coming down toward Pendleton (yes, home of the Roundup), one crosses wide farming areas on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. On the way there, I had seen a tribal police speed trap, and watched my speed carefully this time–but the only speed trap on the way back on Umatilla land was an OSP van hidden in a clever defile. From Pendleton to the Columbia is rolling high desert, heavy with sagebrush and offering the turn onto I-82 north for home. I pass at one point the hundreds of bunkers in which the nation once stored enough nerve gas to wipe out a fair percentage of humanity. I always feel happy when I’m onto the bridge and the sign welcomes me to Washington. I feel a little less happy when other signs start to harangue me about various laws, but I guess we need them. Limit is 70 in Washington on this part of I-82, which seems kind of symbolic that we’re partly like Oregon and partly like Idaho. Of course, as always, the Oregon license plates will tailgate one even more readily in Washington than in Oregon–they take deep personal umbrage at being impeded in any way, even if there are four other cars ahead, and will come up within a yard of your rear bumper. I’ve never figured out why they do this, but it got old a long time ago.

These drives used to be worse before the Ipod came along. I got four and a half hours of Viking metal quality time, though my truck is noisy enough that I must jack up the volume in order to hear anything over the background road noise. Pick up the dog from Rich and Betsy (bless them), drop off some Basque sausage for them (Rich is Pennsylvania Polish, thus the perfect tidbit), and home to some cold beers.

After four and a half hours in the saddle, with only one ten-minute leak break, I need them.

Adventures, Editing/writing life, Married life

Radcon 2013: Saturday

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Radcon is the annual science fiction convention of Tri-Cities, WA.

Naturally, we stayed up until four last night being raucous. Naturally, I knocked back half a quart of tequila and woke up with a headache after less than five hours’ sleep. Had some special commitments before and at Radcon that made it somewhat necessary to get moving before one was thoroughly ready, but all was handled in good order without screwing up.

Tell you this: Radcon’s vendors should love up on me. I think my friends have dropped $1000 on the dealer room–and happy to do it. Nyssa and Jeff’s leather goods and clothes are some of the best going, as are Jane and Elizabeth’s at Seams Like Magick. Rebekah went in her medieval stuff complete to the gray cape with the elegant chicken guts on the sleeves, hand-sewn. Marcel’s self-designed and created musketeer costume could buckle the swashes of the Radcon women any day if Jenn weren’t along and equally imposing in her Victorian black silk dress. As before, I was the spud without a costume, except for the white beret.

Made it to a couple of panels, which were pretty good, and caught up with Sharon for a good long catching of up. John did the filk/jam stuff again, toting his violin around all day, and Rebekah reprised her normal role as force of nature. I got to unwind a bit at Bottles & Shots (room party) with the friendly and kind Joe and Adrienne, and met some very nice folks there. This is composed during some upstairs raucosity back at my place (they don’t need my help to be raucous; it comes naturally). Deb has been a saint of taxiing, cooking, prepping, cleaning up and otherwise making everyone feel not just welcome but comfortable and cared for. I totally married the right woman–not because she does such things, but because she wants to. It’s great to see everyone getting along and forming their own relationships independent of the hosts, which is how it should go.

Didn’t get run over by any kids tonight, perhaps because someone said something, and perhaps because this time I was going to brace and take advantage of being built like a bridge abutment. Radcon staff seems to do pretty well in most ways, always remembering its all-volunteer nature. I still have to say, though, that it just is a difficult con for a mobility impairment.

There is no way I am getting soused tonight. None of my guests are–they bring the merriment as easily cold sober as drunk, and none are big drinkers anyway.

Adventures, Married life

Radcon 2013: pre-function

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Naturally, having this also be V-Day was not the normal way. I have an amazing wife who is willing to put herself on call for two whole days just to make sure people get to and from Radcon (see previous posts) with an ice cold sober driver at the wheel. As I write this, though a filter of straight tequila, I have to say that it was only just that she got to tie one on tonight. And she did, Alaskan that she is.

It was actually a very musical evening around our place, once we got all our rabbits in the net. Jenn and Marcel made it in from Canada without much border trouble over Marcel’s swashbuckling sword (evidently the US border guards took it inside and played with it). John, whose plane was on time, is a master of the stringed instrument and Mattias is a capable mixer, guitarist and singer. After Deb’s delicious lasagna (later punctuated by Jenn’s amazing huckleberry pie and cheesecake…good lord), we marshaled in the living room for animated discussion, song and instrumentals. I’m not much of a singer at all, nor much of anything musically, but a rendition of a Kingston Trio Spanish-themed tune had folks listening quietly and applauding (not something my voice usually obtains). Through it all I marveled again that the people who had traveled the least to arrive here were Canadian. Much song, no dance, few dogs (Leo found our sound frightening and hid from the obvious apocalypse) and great people. This is why we do this.

Eagerly awaiting Rebekah (late Friday night), and a meetup with Sharon (a room-lighter, like all the women of this group). Mattias is the only Radcon noob, so I’ll handle the orientation part. We expect to check in with Joe and Adrienne’s bash Friday night, and with any luck I won’t have to crawl to Deb’s car on a bad knee.

Maybe this is how you do Radcon right if you’re the home team: start two days early. It will be rather miraculous if I’m able to post coherently tomorrow night.

Editing/writing life, Married life

History lessons with my wife

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So, I was mostly minding my business tonight while Deb watched Grey’s Anatomy. During a commercial, I looked up from my read of a book on the decline of the Ottoman Empire to read her a passage which I thought said a lot about Napoleon’s ability to influence peoples (though I was in fact a bit wrong about that). She said, in her outside voice as is traditional, “You don’t know history at all!”

“I don’t?”

“No. If you did, you would know that his last name was not really Bonaparte…”–I grew kind of excited–“…but Bone Together. ‘Bonaparte’ was an attempt by him to draw people away from him so he could have sex with the enemy’s women. That’s why he won the war!”

“Seriously?”

“Come at me, big daddy. Ask me anything. Bring it.”

“Okay, very well. What is the significance of Çatalhöyük?”

She fixed me with a gaze of shock and dismay. “You don’t know what Saddle Who You was? Listen and learn. When they wanted to build the Trojan Horse, they needed a saddle that could hold a lot of people. So they made one, and named it Saddle Who You, which is derived from Saddle Hookah. This enabled them to deliver rubbers.”

I looked at her and just laughed. “Rubbers?”

“Duh. Why do you think it was called the Trojan Horse?” I sat silent, like any good husband slow in the uptake. “See? You don’t know your history. Ask me anything else.”

“Fine. Who did Charles “The Hammer” Martel defeat at Poitiers?”

She looked aghast that I could be so clueless. “Charles Martel defeated Le Peu Nailé, which of course means ‘the nail.'” I cracked up again, couldn’t help it. “Keep it coming. Ask me anything.”

“Okay, dear. What was the significance of Charlotte Corday?”

A sigh. “Charlotte Corduroy, you mean. She invented pants, but they were corduroy pants. They were also called ‘whisper pants,’ and the idea was to give them to the enemy so they would whisper when they walked.”

“Really.”

“Absolutely. I’m really sad for anyone like you, with a degree in history, to be so un-knowledgeable.”

“I think you meant ‘ignorant,’ dear.”

“NO! I said ‘un-knowledgeable’ and I meant ‘un-knowledgeable!’ Now come on. Ask me another. I can see I have a lot to teach you.”

“Fine. Please name one of the Spanish explorers of North America.”

She thought for a minute, consulting her stores of learning. “Well, his name was Julio El De Massmainebostainia. There are some states named after him. He came with his wife Maria, their daughter Nina, and some pinto beans.”

At that point, there was nothing for it but to come put it on the blog.

Married life

Making the dog sick

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This morning, Deb and I were having a discussion about dogs and logistics. It wandered, much like Fabius’s mind. Fabius is the elder of her two dogs (black Lab). Leonidas, the junior, is a miniature Schnauzer. I’m not a dog person, though I accept my obligation to assure that they have humane conditions and care as needed.

Anyway, the original understanding was that she would take care of all dog needs wherever humanly possible, and with her being laid off from work for some months, clearly this has been humanly possible. Unfortunately, Fabius has settled upon some very inconvenient latrine areas of late. One definition of an inconvenient latrine area is ‘anyplace I [J.K.] like to be in the yard.’

I decided that it was time to bring this issue up, especially after some unfortunate footwear events last week when I happened to be walking around in the yard. In fact, I was drawing something of a line in the grass, complaining about the issue and asking her to stop promising and start picking up. Fabius was farrowing on the floor (his favorite posture looks very much like that of a sow with new piglets, on his side, legs out), while Leonidas sat on a folded blanket, on the ottoman in front of Deb, following this dog-related discussion with interest.

Just as I articulated to her that I would determinedly resist any notion of getting any more dogs if the situation did not improve, Leonidas assumed the vomiting posture. Before I could complete my little rant, he indicated his dissent by throwing up on the blanket. The look on Deb’s face was priceless.

While the issue will not simply vanish in a small pile of slightly used dog food, that at least tabled it for the time being. For one thing, I couldn’t stop laughing.

Adventures, Married life

Freezing to death

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As I write, it’s 21º F (-6.1º C) outside, not cold by my standards. For various reasons I understand, and some I do not, I have a bizarre natural cold resistance that welcomes the feel of -5 F on my face, and ice forming in my facial hair. But I’m resistant, not immune. I know this because I’m a great rarity: a survivor of third-stage hypothermia. And since some of what I’ve read about ‘what it’s like’ was obviously authored by someone who never felt it, maybe this is a good story for a cold night where I can feel ice in the air. I’ve told it enough times to friends that, maybe, it is time I wrote it down.

This happened at Ft. Lewis, WA, when I was in ROTC. I was young, in my second year, brash, opinionated, mouthy, motivated and clueless. I participated with a sub-group of the battalion known as the Ranger Company. It was purely voluntary, but among its numbers you could generally find the best of the battalion. They were tough, highly motivated, brave and dedicated to the military art. They respected the NCOs’ knowledge and soaked it up as fast as the latter would dole it out. They did extra futtockses (FTXes, ‘field training exercises’) involving long nights running around in the rain and cold at Lewis, being tired and miserable. They were in excellent condition, feared nothing, and were dedicated to winning or dying. They were not fanatics; they were rationally brave and intelligent. Had war come to NATO in the late 1980s, a number of Warsaw Pact formations would have been hurt far worse than they expected, thanks to some young men and women who had once worn a shoulder patch of purple and gold, and suffered in frigid misery patrolling in heavy fog and rain at 3 AM, and been expected to perform well anyway.

There I met some of the best people I’ve ever known. I didn’t complete the program in the end, for reasons which were about 90% the fault of my own immaturity, but I don’t regret my association with it. And one night, aged eighteen, it came so close to killing me that I could feel my life leaking out into the frosty night.

It was the usual FTX scenario: a night assault on a position with M16s firing blanks. (I hated that goddamn rifle so much that you couldn’t get me to buy a civilian assault rifle version for a buck. In fact, you’d have to pay me to take it away. Yes, I know they fixed some of its flaws. Still hate it and anything that looks like it.) A newly commissioned second lieutenant led us toward the pre-assault position. The idea was that a parachute flare would signal the ‘attack.’ We were supported by a psyops reserve unit, which had brought loudspeakers to heckle the opposition. They had a little camp area in the woods, where we had marshaled for the operation.

The night was cold but not seriously so, perhaps in the mid-twenties F, starry and moonless. The always-moist air of the western side of Washington, which can so greedily drain body heat, felt and tasted of ice. The lieutenant positioned us to await the signal, laying prone in the deep frosty grass, surrounded by forests. I don’t remember how long it took, but I was underdressed for a long laydown on icy ground. I hadn’t put the liner into my field jacket, and for whatever reason, the cold went straight into me.

The first stage of hypothermia involves convulsive shivering. This is not your ‘letting the dogs out to do their business for a couple of winter minutes’ shivering. I mean wracking shivering that you cannot suppress. That began for me at some point in the grass–I don’t recall how long it took, but the only other time I’ve felt shivers of that magnitude involved surgical anesthesia wearing off. At that point, I was at least somewhat mentally impaired and disoriented. It felt like it lasted an hour, though I doubt that’s possible. Time grew distorted as I lay there shuddering, miserable and unsure what I was supposed to do.

The second stage can involve hallucinations and an ebb in the shivering, though I promise you it still feels cold. I began to see strange hexagonal light patterns in the night sky, obscuring the winter constellations I knew so well from my teenage astronomy fixation. I also saw an aurora borealis, but not a real one. My mind conjured it from photos I’d seen, all of which were in static black and white. Thus, that’s how I saw it, not the authentic shimmery, changing, polychromatic Northern Lights of my wife’s Alaskan memories. For some reason, I noticed the starlight playing off the frost crystals on my field jacket sleeve. Some time during that stage, I saw some light explode in the sky and heard some noises in the distance. Only later did I realize that those were the signals for the ‘attack’ I was supposed to join in. I was confused and indecisive, and there I lay, awaiting some more definitive signal, or so I thought.

I was too young and dumb to realize my mortal danger during the second stage. It took the third for me to get the message.

After a while–and I’ll never know the actual amount of time–the last of the shudders faded away. Those who tell you that you feel warm in the third stage, certainly never lived through it. However, there is a sense of insulation from the cold as your body begins to mothball systems it deems non-essential: legs, arms, etc. You still know it’s cold, but it just isn’t quite penetrating the way it was when you thought you’d tear a tendon shivering. Evidently the lieutenant had failed to count up his people, and no one had registered that I was missing, because I later learned that no one was out looking for me. I’d heard a lot about how useless second lieutenants were, and how useless I too would be when I was (theoretically) commissioned one, but this was my first good look at the reality.

The hardest part, the hardest thing, about the third stage was the seductive reassurance of sleep. The brain rationalizes: you’ve finally gotten acclimated to the cold, now why not just give in to the fatigue and have a nap until morning? I tell the story through all the fogged memory of a mind impaired by my condition, but some memories are clearer than others, and one of them is why I live today. I had a moment of clarity that said: if you go to sleep now, you will die, out here on 11th Division Prairie or whatever the hell division prairie it is. I could feel life fading away, seeping out like sweat drains body moisture on a hot day. The cold had bitten, drank and was ready to sate itself. If I fell asleep, that’s where I’d be found eventually, dead at eighteen.

For some reason, for whatever reason, it registered with me that I had the choice to walk or die, and not much time to decide. I can’t explain why I made the choice I did, but I forced myself to my feet and started walking. Gods only know how I found the reservists’ bivouac, but somehow I wandered into it. No one checked me out, or seemed to realize that I’d been missing, and I didn’t say anything–I was both rummy and embarrassed that I hadn’t taken part in what I was supposed to do. In any case, they had coffee and stuff, and a fire of some sort, and there was ample opportunity to get warm. I didn’t tell anyone about my situation, so in the darkness and general banter of post-operation socializing, it went unknown and untended. Didn’t really matter; I wasn’t frostbitten and was no longer freezing to death.

Now as I look back on that night thirty years gone, I wonder how many other people have lived through that stage of hypothermia without some form of active rescue. I rarely read other survivors’ accounts. I wonder what others who died experienced, whether they saw the odd things I saw, why they fell asleep. Did it sneak up on them? Was there nowhere to walk to, probably true of most cases? What was it like for them? They felt the final ebb of life from their systems, the final fading, which I never did. And it’s too late for them to describe it, so I am as close as you can probably get.

The last time temperature had endangered my life, it had been sunstroke, and I’d been seven. The last thing I remember is them lowering me into a bathtub full of ice cubes. Before I was old enough to take a legal drink of beer, I had felt both extremes reach for my life, and come back denied.

I don’t fear the cold. Last year, when we got a rare cold snap down to -5º F, I couldn’t wait to go walking. I wore only rubber boots, sweats, t-shirt, windbreaker and a toque. I had gloves, which I removed early, and soon took my hands out of my pockets. I unzipped my windbreaker partway; it was getting hot in there. I took a twenty-minute neighborhood walk in the ice and snow, not long, just enough to feel it. It was so quiet, snowy, reflective, muffly, lovely. As usual with me, it was like an internal heater fired up (one whose pilot light had evidently been out that night at Ft. Lewis). When I came into the house afterward, I went straight to Deb and laid both my bare hands on her arm. They were hot, not cold, on her skin. She called me a freak, exactly as custom requires.

No, I don’t fear the cold. But I by the gods respect it. When I go out in it now, I feel it kiss me. Well, I know what it feels like when it gets to third base.

I think I’ll stick to the necking part from here on out.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life, Human relations, Married life

Professor Willis Konick

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Let us begin 2013 on the ‘Lancer with something joyous and uplifting. [This text is superceded in mood by the final para, but let it stand as set for what it meant while Willis was with us.]

It has been a quarter century since I last saw him in person, he has since retired; and still when I see a friend post about Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, I think of Willis Konick.

To call him ‘Professor’ was unthinkable, as Willis would advise the entire class on the first day. An alumnus of and longtime professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, his entire life was bound up with the Russian language, Russian literature and UW. He taught Comparative Literature and Russian Literature there for so long it became hard to imagine UW without him. If I were to call him ‘Professor Konick’ in this blog post, someone would find out about it, and one of two things might happen. That person might call me out in comments as a complete fake, because anyone who ever actually attended a Willis lecture knew good and well that no one used his last name. Or that person might send the blog link to Willis, who would not only recognize my name and remember me, but who would write to me asking how I was doing, suggesting we have coffee any time I was in Seattle, and politely reminding me that his name was ‘Willis.’

I am not making any of this up, nor am I exaggerating. Willis did his best to have coffee with as many of his students as possible, and had an amazing memory for faces and names.

Willis’s class was the one no one skipped. It was always in a lecture hall with at least 200 seats, usually more like 300, purely because of demand. Yes. A literature professor so entertaining and appealing that the school was forced to schedule his classes in large lecture halls. People scrambled to get into a literature class. Whole decades of UW undergrads filled up their humanities distribution requirements with English 111 plus whatever Willis classes they could squeeze into. Except for a few hundred math and tech wonks from other countries who spoke such minimal English that a literature class was out of the question, at UW all 35,000 students learned of ‘Willis’ in the first week on campus.

While an excellent lecturer and student of the genre (he speaks and reads fluent Russian, and each year would read War & Peace or Anna Karenina, alternating), neither that nor his obvious love of everything about teaching accounted for all of his popularity. Much of that stemmed from his famous impromptu in-class skits to dramatize a character or concept. Willis would reach into the mass of 250 students, and without error, pick out the perfect individual as his foil. Didn’t matter whether it was a nervous young lady in a sorority sweatshirt, a blowhard, a future engineer, or one of his groupies. No one ever refused, even when he chose someone deliberately for shyness. He was known to dump buckets of water on his head on stage, strip to his underwear, open his shirt and claw at his pale chest, and so much more.

I too had my day, and the best way to convey Willis is to tell the story.

I can’t even remember whether it was a Comp Lit or Russian Lit class, not that the distinction ever made a difference with Willis. De facto always outshone de jure. He was teaching Anna, and as I recall, the class was in Gowen Hall on the Quad. Willis was explaining the nuances of Vronsky, and then his bespectacled eyes got that wild look which told us something was coming. He scanned the classroom like a confident quarterback whose pocket is just barely holding, quick head movements and a smile repressed only by force of professional will. The eyes achieved lock-on when they hit me. “JOHN! YES, YOU! JOHN! COME DOWN HERE, PLEASE, I’D LIKE A WORD WITH YOU!”

You know you are about to be had, but you go anyway. You know you are going to be embarrassed, but you also know you’ll remember it when you are twice as old as the day it happens. As I made my way to the aisle and descended the steps, I saw Willis do as he so often did, turning toward the stage and bounding onto it. Anything to do with acting or performance subtracted decades from his sixtyish physical age. He awaited me with sparkling eyes but as solemn a countenance as he could enforce. There was a sturdy wooden table up there, for some reason, and he encouraged me to have a seat.

“So, John, you were in my class last quarter,” began Willis.

“Yes, Willis, I was.”

“And you turned in your final paper.”

“Yep.”

“How do you feel about it?

Something in his tone cued me. I can’t explain it any other way. He had given me 4.0, and still I gave the right answer. “Not too good, Willis,” I responded glumly.

“No,” he answered gravely, making sure to pitch his voice so they could hear him in the back rows (he had an effect like Epidaurus that way). “I hate to say this, John, but that was the worst paper of the quarter.”

I waited, doing the despondent face as best I could.

“In fact, your paper was so terrible, it was the worst paper of the year. I’m confident that nothing that will come will be worse. Your paper was so awful, I have given you a 0.0 for the quarter. I trust you understand.”

Still I sat in mock glumness.

“Sadly, John, your paper was such a disgrace that I felt compelled to bring it to the attention of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He agreed with me that it was the worst paper he too had ever seen. It was so disappointing that, harsh as it may seem, you are being expelled from the University.”

I looked miserable.

“You know how Reagan calls the astronauts to congratulate them? President Reagan is calling your parents to chastise them for your paper!”

I heard the first giggles from the audience, but I held back my own.

His tone went almost sympathetic. “Now, John, it’s obvious you can’t stay here. You must go, as you must leave the University. But is there anything you’d like to say before you depart in complete disgrace? What would you like to say to the class, and to me? Would you like, for example, to ask for another chance?”

“Doesn’t seem right, Willis. It was a pretty poor effort.”

“Yes, it was,” he answered sternly. “Nor would you receive one. Would you like to plead that you tried your best?”

“That’d be lying. I didn’t try at all.”

“That much was obvious,” he said, voice mournful. “Would you like to tell them that in spite of all of this, you’re still a nice guy?”

He’d thrown a switch. Nothing in his tone signaled anything; it was all in the genius of his having chosen me for this specific skit. For the first time since he’d initially addressed me, my head snapped around to him. “YES!” I said, raising my voice a tad in indignation.

Willis smiled, stood up in his most professorial stance, actor’s posture discarded faster than you could think. He raised a finger. “I MAY BE A COMPLETE SCREW-UP, BUT AT LEAST I’M STILL A NICE GUY. And that is what Vronsky is trying to tell us here. John, thank you,” he added. I made my way back to my seat, as I had seen so many other students do. None of it had been rehearsed or planned. In a few seconds he could read precisely the type of person he needed, to react in the precise ways necessary to demonstrate his point, picking him or her out of nearly three hundred people.

Fifteen years later, when I was authoring my (as yet unpublished) Irish travel narrative, my wife encouraged me to write to Willis and ask him to author an introduction. I thought she was nuts, but I did it. He asked me to send him the ms, in print, and I did. He pointed out what was missing from it, and encouraged me to read a couple of other travel books that would demonstrate the qualities my ms needed in order to become publishable. You always take all personal career counseling given you by your most admired figures, or you’re an idiot. When I’d finished the rewrite, I sent him the portion he wanted to see. He praised my remedying of the flaws and agreed to write an introduction if I wished. While no one ended up publishing the book–which I still may do on my own–one more time, I learned a lot from Willis about writing.

He retired in 2007, aged 77. And if you think anything you just read is far-fetched at all, I have the Seattle Times to back me up.

Thanks, Willis, for everything on every level. Oh, and I’m re-reading Brothers. Maybe this time I’ll get at least half of it.

P.S., December 16, 2016: Willis passed away November 30, 2016. I feel so fortunate to have known him.

Married life

Don’ts for husbands

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I’ve thought of this a lot over the years. While I won’t say that this can’t apply to husbands who have husbands, or to many other partnership situations and perspectives, I’m only speaking in particular to my own experience: as a husband who has a wife. Thus, for me, the other person is ‘her.’ I figured most of this out by talking to women, who shared with me both positive and negative examples. I tend to believe they know what they’re talking about. I tend to doubt they would mislead me. Thus:

  • Don’t ever suppress or insult her efforts to be creative. That is counterproductive and stupid.
  • Don’t criticize her cooking or cleaning, lest she shove the obvious rejoinder up your behind: “You know, honey, you are absolutely right. You are so right. So right, in fact, that in the future, I’m going to let you do it, and show me how I should have been doing it.”
  • Don’t be too big a jerk over rearranging furniture. Yes, it’s already in the logical places, and yeah, moving it around seems counterproductive. She probably likes change, and her life is naturally more attuned to it than a man’s. Got to go along with some of this.
  • Don’t get a complex if she out-achieves you in work. Instead, make plans for both your early retirement in greater comfort. Only a weak man wants a weak woman, or is threatened by her success. A strong man wants a strong woman he can brag about, a real partner with many abilities. It does not make you any less. If you are strong enough to be proud of what she achieves, it makes you more.
  • Don’t make unfounded paranoid accusations. For one thing, it’s not a loving act. For another, she may well decide that if she is going to hang for the crime, she might as well deserve it, which would mean that paranoia just created unfaithfulness that would never otherwise have come.
  • Don’t let your family abuse her. Ever. Be man enough to make clear to them that they can either treat her with kindness and respect, or they can be excluded from your life, yes, even your uncle that the whole family knows is a dick and tolerates anyway. No man worth a damn is comfortable seeing people be mean to his woman. Same for your friends–if they don’t show her courtesy and respect, then you hang around with the wrong people.
  • Don’t bring in the physical dimension. Don’t yell, threaten or gods forbid, lay a hand on her in anger. As long as she can absolutely trust you never to do this, your relationship has at least one great quality even if it has other problems. The day she no longer has reason to extend that trust, you broke something that’ll be hard to come back from.
  • Don’t call her names. Here’s a rule I find useful: if you’re about to call her something that, if it were true, there’s no reason you’d want to be with her, that name is potentially fatal to a relationship, and you had best never call her that.
  • Don’t just let her suffer without stepping up. This can mean a lot of things, but what underlies it is this: most of the time, she doesn’t really need someone else. It’s that 5% of the time, when she falters and needs to feel support and strength and all those good manly things, where she learns what you’re made of, and if you step up, reminds her why you’re good to have around. Shine when it is your time.
  • Don’t be a loose cannon with money. Too many men airily think it should be they who look after the finances, and then don’t use common sense. If you suck at money management, let her do it unless she sucks worse (in which case you two have some real serious potential problems).
  • Don’t be emotionally or physically bullied yourself. Happens especially with women coming out of abusive relationships. Does it suck to get punished because, basically, some other guy was a scumbag? It very much does suck, but the law won’t let you shoot him, so this is all you can do. Stand your ground on basic self-respect, and be patient, because the recovery process takes time even if she works hard at it and wants it badly. Abuse hammers her self-respect. By showing her that you respect yourself–and her–you give her a better vision.
  • When she’s with her gal friends, don’t screw up their fun. Simple. Don’t screw up the women’s fun. To women, children are the people that do not understand that other people are sometimes the priority. They already have access to children. They don’t want an overgrown adult one who can’t be left alone for three hours without having some need or want. If you wander into the gathering, say hello to them, be polite for a minute or two, then let them do their thing with good grace. What you need to understand is that when you do this with good grace, after you leave, the other women tell her what a nice man you are, and she gets to bask in that. Just be an adult, live your life without messing up their fun for the evening, and do that knowing you made her happy.
  • Don’t be a crappy listener. Stop thinking of how to win the debate, stop thinking of your next comeback. You can’t expect her to care how you feel if you don’t stop and listen to her tell you how she feels.
  • Don’t react to anything until you have a good idea how much effort or expense she invested in it, whether it’s her hair or her manuscript or her new epiphany. Because the more she put into it, the more crushing it is to hear something negative. A good percentage of my own married life has involved the struggle to shut up and think before I open my trap.
  • Don’t die on too many hills. It is true that it’s good to choose your hills to die on. Here’s the problem with choosing those hills: you do die on them. Most of us would rather not die any more often than we can avoid.
  • Don’t expect to buy your way out of big errors with a credit card. It may seem to work on the outside, but if you really screwed up, money and material stuff is just a patch, not a fix. A fix is when you resolve not to make that mistake again, face the music, and do what can be done to make it right. I ask myself “Am I sorry enough not to do it again, or just sorry she’s mad about it?” Plus, if your finances are even remotely joined, you’re also spending her money by way of apology.
  • Don’t play on her insecurities to manipulate her. Maybe she has none, but most of us do, and with good reason, because we have both real and imagined/exaggerated flaws. Every time you jab at an insecurity, it’s like a kick in the balls. I’m going to take a gamble here and assume that you have at least once been hit right in the sack, and that you did not enjoy it. (I’ve taken slapshots, sinkers and bad hops there myself. I could have done without those.)
  • Don’t expect her to echo all your religious and political views. Who wants a partner too dumb or fearful to challenge his thinking? Who is so shallow and insecure that he’s afraid of that? Who is really so sure he has everything figured out and that any other view is just stupid? A true idiot, that’s who.
  • Don’t try to get her to just think and be like a man about things. She isn’t one, and no matter how we arrange the world, she still probably will see the world differently than you. (Don’t believe me? Okay. Are you afraid to go walking at night by yourself? Probably not. She may not be afraid, but she has to think about stuff you don’t, unless she is naturally fearless or is not sane.) If you want a partner who acts like a man, well, it might be you have some questions to consider. Go far enough to accept that her logic, which on the surface may seem illogical to you, may be quite logical when the world is viewed through her eyes. Stop. Try to see it through her eyes.
  • Don’t destroy stuff in the process of ‘fixing’ it. Yeah, we mostly like to show off our handiness, but know when you’re out of your depth. A good friend and a wise husband once said: “From here, I will plumb no more forever.”
  • Don’t do too many things with bad grace. If you hate it, truly hate it, you’ve got a choice. Either decide you just can’t do it–and accept what that means–or do it anyway, as an act of love, with good grace because (I presume) it’ll make her happy. She doesn’t like much of anything you do with bad grace.
  • Don’t go silent without some explanation of the reason, but by the same token, don’t be stampeded or pressured into a discussion you haven’t really considered. It’s fine to say, “Look, I really haven’t worked out what I think about this. Can we talk about it when I have?” Of course, if you do that, and you just never take the initiative to restart the conversation, she will have good reason to think you’re just dodging discussions in the future. You can ask for a recess if you need it, but that puts it on you to decide when you’re ready to be back in session.
  • Don’t follow any rule off a cliff. True in writing, true in wedding.