John and Ann

I was thinking this morning about one of my favourite stories about my parents. They are in their 34th year of marriage (35 in November) and they live in Ireland. Retired. They travel a lot. My father is fairly serious/responsible/organized/a bit of a stiff--to be fair, though, he has chilled out A LOT since retirement. My mother is goofy/silly/imaginative/disorganized/flaky at times, ie; she and my father are good ying and yang for each other. My mother also has a rather twisted sense of humour, which helps to explains the following story:

My parents are reading the paper in the sunroom of their house in Ireland. My mother looks out into the garden and says, "John, we should get a dog." My father flips back a corner of his newspaper and says, "A dog? But we travel so much, what would we do with it while we were away?" My mother replies: "Oh, well, we can just kill it, bury it in the yard, and get another one when we get back." My father doesn't miss a beat, just looks out the window and says, "We're going to need a bigger yard."

And this is what I like to think marriage is all about.