Getting married is the easy part. It’s what comes after that often proves challenging.
Take my husband for instance. Pretty normal guy. Hard working, honest, funny, down to earth, pretty typical old-school country boy. Not a lot of surprises there.
But we all have our idiosyncrasies don’t we? And as newly married couples we maturely learn how to accept (or ignore) these peculiarities in our spouses, or we end up constantly daydreaming about throttling. But in any case, boy was I in for a surprise.
My husband and I hadn’t been married for very long when I decided to make liver for dinner. I like liver. I had even asked my husband if he liked liver and got an affirmative answer. So, yes! Liver it was.
He walked in the door after work one day, lifted his nose in the air, sniffed and asked, “Liver?” I exclaimed in a I’m-still-a-newlywed and Oh-so-proud-of-my-new-husband way, “Yes! Very good guess!” (Although it’s sort of difficult to not know the smell of liver cooking, but anyway…)
To my surprise, he frowned at me and said, “You didn’t warn me.”
I said, “Huh?”
He then patiently sighed and said, “You didn’t warn me that we were having liver.”
I just stood there for a minute, mouth hanging open attractively, it dawning on me that I still didn’t know this man at all and that he might just in fact be a little peculiar. I again intelligently asked, “Huh? Warn you? Why? Of what?”
Another patient sigh, arms crossed, “I TOLE you this before, you have to warn me in the morning if we’re having liver for dinner.”
I then sat down in preparation for the explanation I was still hoping to get. I said, “Uh NO, you never TOLE me that before because I would have called you a weirdo. What in the world? Why do you have to be warned for Pete’s sake? I thought you liked liver?”
This time he rolled his eyes at my apparent ignorance and lack of understanding and said, “I DO like liver but I have to be warned. My mouth has to get ready. Why is this so hard for you to understand? You’re just being difficult.” He then proceeded to not eat the liver I made for dinner because he had not been given the proper, prerequisite warning.
Well. Ok then! Forewarned is taste buds forearmed!
I’ve forgotten a few times to warn him though and have been known to run down the road in the morning, chasing the car in my robe and slippers, waving my hands, shouting, “WE’RE HAVING LIVER FOR DINNER, OK???” (Glad we live on a mountaintop all by ourselves!)
This was 15 years ago and I’m still making liver and I’m still warning him – even if I still don’t understand what the deal is. Because that’s what you do for the people you love. You accept them for who they are, idiosyncrasies and all.
Even if it does mean running down the road in your robe and slippers shouting about liver. It’s my way of saying, “I love you!”
Alisha Nelson is a city girl learning to live off grid on a mountain in Montana with a country boy. She says it makes for an endless supply of funny stories, even if they weren’t always funny at the time. You can follow her at the Roanoke Star as well as her blog: funnysideofthemountain.blogspot.com 
