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49 As a 1930s wife, I am Average Take the test!

I make a barely adequate 1930s wife, and I'll tell you why:
- fails to wash the top of the milk bottle before opening it? Yes.
- gives [The Fella] shampoos and manicures? No.
- slows up card game with chatter and gossip? Yes.
- tells risque or vulgar stories? Oh, hell yes --- this one time, I told a risque or vulgar story in a burlesque club, when we were between acts, and I ... Oh.

I fare much better as a husband.

126 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Over the past year or so, D and I accidentally developed a favorite sport that could readily go by the name Stump The Sweetheart. The game can start anytime, any place, when one partner lobs the first pitch: "I love you" followed by a nonsense nickname. The second player answers with "I love you" followed by an unrelated nonsense nickname.

The volleys continue until a player bursts out laughing, falters, or delivers an inaudible. "I love you, [mumblety-peg]" would be a losing stroke. Oddly enough, "I love you, Mumblety-Peg!" would not.

The faltering, when one of us is simply unable to concoct a nonsense endearment, occurs with surprising regularity. It's harder than you'd think to keep tossing out absurd cooing endearments without pause. You try it sometime. "I love you, Rosencrantz," suits the game down to the ground, but a return of "I love you, Guildenstern," gets the buzzer.

A sufficiently hilarious salvo from the instigator gets the (significant) other cracking up, resulting in an ace: the schmoopie equivalent of a hole in one. "I love you, Fry and Laurie" was a recent inexplicable example.

Some contenders for the No-You're-The-Schmoopie doorprize around these parts:

I love you, Bruce Lee
I love you, perfessor
I love you, cuttlefish
I love you, Dr. Beardface
I love you, guv'ner
I love you, rambling rose
I love you, Tipsy McDrunkerton
I love you, sans serif
I love you, Iron Chef
I love you, Harper Lee
I love you, Señor Biggles
I love you, moon pie
I love you, wifi
I love you, bagel face
I love you, Mister Bingley
I love you, Spiderpig
I love you, Chief Shoot 'em Up

Honorable mention goes to "I love you, monkey," a phrase disallowed in the game, as it's the standard endearment chez nous.

I was a late bloomer.

In seventh grade, I had one close male friend: Alfred. Alfred was just my height, slim, with wispy black hair always in need of a trim, and the shadow of a mustache blooming on his lip. His voice was gentle and he put a mouth over his hand when he laughed, like a Japanese schoolgirl.

I was a chunky girl with thick glasses, a clumsy haircut, and a ready braying laugh, always carrying a stack of books.

He never talked to me about girls, not even my pretty friends. I think maybe I had decided he wasn't interested in girls, though I never gave it much conscious thought.

One day as we walked down the hallway together, talking in desultory fashion of the Honors English class we'd left, Alfred suddenly pushed me into the nook that housed the drinking fountain. Trapped there in the cinder-block corner, I opened my eyes wide, and closed my gaping mouth just in time as he loomed in and planted a kiss on me.

He pulled back, looked me softly in the eyes, a question on his face.

Reader, I punched him.

Really. I don't know where this instinct was born. I didn't intend it, I was ashamed of it then, and I'm ashamed of it now. I hauled off and socked him in the eye. He sported a faint shadow of a black eye for days, a week... I don't really know how long, since we stopped spending much time together after that.

Cross-posted from metachat.

Last week, after a long hot day of visiting extended family (his), with a long drive ahead of him and wanting more than anything to get off the road and into bed, D surprised me by pulling into a roadside ice cream stand. Earlier in the day I had idly mentioned that sometime this summer we should get ourselves a big ole drippy cone. I thought we deserved a treat, one of these days.

And he wanted to be sure I got my treat, even if it meant a longer drive home.

I got a big soft-serve cone, chocolate with jimmies? chocolate sprinkles? jim-jams! and a fit of giggles. He got a milkshake and a blizzard of giggling kisses.

Best. Marriage proposal. Ever.

Introducing the Twister deviant duvet cover. How do you know when it's your turn to spin?

I suggest a novelty duvet that more accurately reflects the strategems and scheming many people bring to the art of seduction.

And then, inevitably, someone will bring out the Connect Four headboard. "Pretty sneaky, sis!"

And let's not even start speculating about Clue. Ooooh, Professor Plum!

They feel more like eels slithering around in there.

Angry eels.

I have a country-western showtune stuck in my head, and that's better than it sounds:

I've got spurs that jingle jangle jingle

As I go ridin' merrily along

Betcha don't know what they sing, do you?

And they sing, "Oh, ain't you glad you're single?"

And that song ain't so very far from wrong!

Most of my friends are married or partnered, and that is lovely, I'm sure. But for me, well, I'm not ready to hang up my spurs just yet.

Thanks to David Wygant and the Seattle Times for the quote of the day:

Just because somebody's pretty doesn't mean they're not a geek like you inside.

[Link via Bookslut.]

For more excellent Dating Advice In Brief, try this.

Good advice from Monkey.