Not that it is of particular interest to anybody except me and my
immediate family, but this Saturday, September 7, is the 28th anniversary
of the day my better half, Roxanne, and I got hitched, in Fisher Garden,
on the campus of what was then known as Southwestern at Memphis. The
school is now named Rhodes College.
In observance of this auspicious occasion, I have elected to risk my
dear wife’s anger by retelling a couple of stories from the early
days of our marriage. It’s not that the stories are all that embarrassing
or anything like that. It’s just that she threatens me with death
or dismemberment every time I write about her.
We hadn’t been married very long when I discovered something about
my bride that I was completely unaware of, up to that point. She is,
or was, capable of complete conversations while asleep. She hasn’t
done it in a long time but I suspect the capability is still there.
One night, I was deep in a sound sleep, when she sat up in bed and roughly
shook me awake. Now, the only other time she had done this was when
she was having an asthma attack, so, naturally, this is what I feared
as I came to my senses. This was not the case, however.
She looked straight into my still sleep-laden eyes and demanded, “What
did you do with the shoes?”
Being a bright, witty fellow in those days, I replied, “What shoes?’
Her response to my impolite answering of a question with a question
was an enigmatical, “Oh, never mind.”
At which point she immediately closed her eyes and lay down, never stirring
again for the remainder of the night. I know she never stirred because
I sat up the rest of the night, asking myself, “What shoes?”
Come the morning light, my bride professed no knowledge of the night’s
events as I related them to her. She had been asleep the entire time.
To this day, when she swears up and down that she has told me about
something I am supposed to do, but of which I have no knowledge, I will
ask her, “What did you do with the shoes?”
That line is starting to wear a little thin, though, after 28 years.
I’m going to have to come up with a new excuse.
The other event I wanted to bring up has more to do with the location
of the abode in which we dwelt at the time. It was a large town house
apart ment that backed up to a major intersection in Memphis. The intersection
had a railroad line running through it.
One night I was awakened by a pervasive roaring noise. Opening my eyes
I saw a flickering red light on the wall of the bedroom. Being a young
fellow and still capable of leaping out of bed, I did so, simultaneously
calling to my wife, “Roxanne, get up! The house is one fire!”
With a calm imperturbability she maintains to this day, she rolled over
and said, “It’s a train, you idiot. Get back in bed.”
She was right, of course. The train was making the roaring noise and
the red light came from the warning signals at the intersection.
I went back to bed. I mean, what else could I do at that point?
I will close, gentle readers, with a few lines of verse I composed in
honor of a wedding anniversary a couple of decades ago:
