It’s A Date!

When my wife and I went out to breakfast, the waitress asked if we were on our honeymoon. This was a reasonable question as we were eating breakfast in Niagara Falls, Canada which which attracts honeymooners the way a bus accident attracts personal injury lawyers. Pretty much everybody you meet in Niagara Falls — including bus drivers, personal injury lawyers and marriage counselors — is also a honeymooner. If honeymooners were terrorists, Niagara Falls would be the Canadian Falujah.

To complete the illusion that we were inhabitants of that happy space between the wedding ceremony and the first serious fight, we were sitting side-by-side in the restaurant booth instead of across the table.

“Aren’t you sweet,” the waitress said.

Maybe.

The truth is, I’ve come to realize that the real work of dating is just beginning for me. My wife and I have spent more than two decades as co-parents of two boys. I wouldn’t say that we never went on dates during those years. My wife might, but I wouldn’t.

For active parents, a calendar isn’t a blank slate of potential dates. It’s an ink-spattered harbinger of doom which makes it nearly impossible to find an evening that doesn’t conflict with school fund-raisers, school plays, parent-teacher-conferences, School Board meetings, PTA meetings, dental visits, medical visits, eye-exams, school supply shopping trips, pet supply shopping trips, karate class, field trip planning meetings, field trips, mandatory post-field trip debriefing sessions, play dates, school dances, real dates, baccalaureates, graduations, and after-grad parties. Actually planning a date for just the parents is a logistical challenge on a par with launching the space shuttle or invading an alien planet.

Like teenagers from warring families, we had to steal away for our dates when we thought our absence wouldn’t be noticed.

As a result, we’d hit that point in our marriage when we looked up at each other and said, “I remember you. You were at my wedding!”

Which is why I’ve turned my attention to dating my wife.

This turns out to be a pretty frightening prospect because I’m not entirely certain how I won her affections in the first place. My early dating experiences in high school weren’t entirely successful in terms of actually getting girls to go out with me. It seemed like all of the eminent guys on the dating scene possessed things I didn’t; cars, clear complexions and actual muscles. They also never used words like “eminent.”

If Disney had made a True-Life Adventures film about my high school, when the camera turned on me, the narrator would have said, “Here we see the solitary geekling wandering the halls of his high school. He is likely to remain lonely until he matures and attains commercial success or adopts a new persona.”

When it came to out-competing the guys in high school, I might as well have tried beating a photon in a foot race.

Things didn’t improve much in college. If I had been completely honest, I might have taken out a personal ad which said, “Pale nerd with obsessive tendencies, an unhealthy interest in video games and an extensive science fiction collection seeks similarly-minded female for dating and possible attempt to rule the galaxy as husband and wife.”

Somehow, though, I actually met a wonderful woman who enjoyed my “quirky” personality. On our first date I had a pretty good idea that she was the one because a) she didn’t run screaming at the sight of me; and b) when I dragged her to a bookstore she went willingly. Somehow, over the course of the next few months, we grew close and … you guessed it … I persuaded her to rule the galaxy with me.

I may have oversold the whole “ruling the galaxy” thing, but the marriage part of my proposal has worked out beautifully. Except now I’m a little fuzzy on just what I did to connect with her and I worry that I might not be able to reconnect.

Part of the problem is that dating gets a whole lot more complex when you’re with someone that really knows you. First dates can be easy so long as you have a creative mind and a flexible standard of honesty. Does your date like rocket scientists? Pretend to be one. Brain surgeon? Sure, just pepper the conversation with a few words you’ve picked up watching House, Gray’s Anatomy, or pharmaceutical ad for Nexium. Are firefighters her thing? Snuff out the candle on the table and tell her it’s a reflex action.

None of that is going to pull any weight with your wife, of course. She knows you’re no more a scientist, surgeon or fireman than you are a butcher, baker or candlestick maker. My own personal wife knows that I am a middle-manager. For the past twenty-four years I’ve made the mistake of talking about my day job when I get home at night and it’s too late now to convince her that I’m actually a deep-cover spy for the CIA.

Of course, there is an upside to the fact that she knows me pretty well. I no longer have to try to hide the insanity on my side of the family tree. At the same time, I have to be careful not to mention her crazy sister. That kind of conversation definitely doesn’t move the evening along in a positive direction.

The biggest challenge is coming up with a date which surprises her. Whatever I suggest — dinner, a movie, dinner-and-a-movie — we’ve probably done it before. To really get her attention I have to do something new and exciting like a train ride or a trip over the falls in a barrel. I was wracking my brain for a good idea for a date — an idea that I hadn’t used on her yet — when I realized that I was competing with myself. After twenty-four years I’ve become the guy I can’t beat.