Even Dirty, Dirty People Need Valentines

Chuck and Deb enjoying a Barcelona sunset

After 35 years of marriage, you think you know everything there is to know about your spouse, right?

Nay, not so.

Why, just last week I learned something I never knew about my main man Chuck.

It happened when I walked into the bathroom to find Chuck standing there staring at the towel rack with a befuddled look on his face.

Now our towel rack is actually a free standing hat rack that we converted to towel usage because two measly little wall mounted metal bars just weren't enough. Apparently we are dirty, dirty people.

The towel rack stands in the bathroom corner draped with my two pink towels and his two brown towels. They're usually spread apart just enough for drying purposes. Usually. But not always. (Incidentally, in case you care, the point of his towels being brown is because he seldom remembers to throw them in the wash. After a while, his previous white terrycloth robe turned brown anyway, so I cleverly went ahead and bought brown towels this go round.)

I told you we were dirty, dirty people. 

Anyway, back to Chuck's conundrum as he stood there presumably watching the brown towels sprout green fuzz.

"What exactly are you doing," I asked."Teaching the towels tricks?"

"I just don't know what to do," he answered, shaking his head and stroking his silver chin hairs.

"About what?" I responded in my best trying-to-sound-interested voice. The following revelation astounded me.

"Well, I always hang my towels in the east-west positions. I use the east hook towel on odd-numbered days and the west hook towel on even-numbered days so I don't use the same one twice in a row. But today's the 9th and I took three showers yesterday, one already today and I'm about to take another. I'm just not sure which towel to use."  

Oh. Wait. What?

I can't believe I've lived with this man three and a half decades and never realized he had such a complex towel usage system. I mean, I toss my pink towels up there and they land willy-nilly wherever they may. Sometimes they even land on - GASP - another towel. The towel I choose for use next is completely random. Really, does it matter? I have two. I figure when a hole gets worn in one, I'll start using the other.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me; I've always known we were opposites since the day we met in 1975. It was my very first day of college. I was 17 and he was 20 and he arrived just as we did in a car driven by the boyfriend of my only friend at the university.

I'll never forget it. These hunky college boys pulled into the parking space next to ours. My heart zinged at first sight of the cute fellow with long wavy hair brushing his shoulders, carrying a guitar and wearing jeans and a flannel shirt rolled up at the sleeves.

It took nearly a whole semester to make him notice me (he was, after all, a lofty senior and I was a mere baby freshman), and another month or so to reel him in for the catch. But then the rest, as they say, is history.

It's been a wild ride these 35 years and more fun than a barrel of hoppy toads.

I must say I find it exciting to keep learning new things about my husband after all these years. Can't say I've ever been bored. Now excuse me while I make a run to the store for a few new brown towels for my dirty, dirty Valentine.