I started this year with a goal: looking for examples of what makes love work. I keep finding them. Sometimes in unexpected places. Like on our Alaskan vacation. Who knew love lessons would abound there?
“That’s what marriage is…”
Comedian Merl Hobbs entertained the ship the first night. A lot of his jokes were marriage centered. One of his tag lines (that he eventually incorporated into more than a few punch lines) was: “That’s what marriage is: doing stuff you don’t want to do.”
As comics often do, through humor he highlighted trials of marriage most of us know, mostly from the husband’s perspective. Like husbands going shopping when they don’t want to. Or to a dinner party with a couple they’re not crazy about. Or being very careful with his choice of words when asked, “Honey, how do I look in this?” After all these scenarios he’d end with: “That’s what marriage is, doing stuff you don’t want to do.”
For the rest of the cruise Wayne and I could often be heard repeating the tag line to each other. Such as Wayne to me when I dragged him into souvenir shops. Or me to him when he ran me all over Juneau trying to find the cheapest way to get to the Mendenhall Glacier.
“Don’t die.”
At another point in Merl Hobbs’s act, he asked the audience how many married couples were in the audience. As expected, a bunch of hands shot up. Next he asked how many had been married 20 years of more. Less hands. 30? Even less hands. 40? A few hands.
Eventually he got around to asking if anyone had been married over 50 years. He called on someone who raised their hand and asked how many anniversaries they’d celebrated.
“Fifty–eight,” a man proudly announced.
“Impressive. Congratulations, sir. Anyone longer than that?” Hobbs asked.
To his surprise (and most of us in the audience) someone raised their hand.
“How long, sir?”
“Sixty-one years!” the older man exuberantly declared.
After the audience applauded, it was joke time. Hobbs took the opportunity to point out the women were clapping, impressed by the longevity. The men were groaning and wondering how the poor sucker hung in there so long.
So Hobbs asked him what his secret was. The man in the audience was a bit of a comic himself. He yelled back, “Don’t die!”
(Which reminded me of another article I wrote recently in which I made the exact same observation. Just not perhaps as poetically or succinctly.)
“What a wonderful world…”
Then there was the night singer Ned Rifken performed. Before he sang his closing song, he told a story about his mom and how the song was dedicated to her memory.
Then he asked us to think of the people in our lives who were irreplaceable, and, if we were lucky enough to be sitting next to them, to hold them extra tight through the duration of the song. For a change, Wayne and I were good at following directions and did just that.
Then Mr. Rifken sang Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” I can say pretty confidently I was not the only one without dry eyes afterwards.
I was embarrassed the song had moved me, but Wayne was there to wipe my tears.
“Thanks, babe,” I said.
“No problem. After all, that’s what marriage is…”