Telling Tales on the Wife

If you have been married for a while and understand the intricacies of the marital relationship, you often find out things about your spouse you never expected.  Barb and I have been married now for almost 19 years, and in that blessed time there have been those moments which serve to amuse and stimulate memories and are just worth retelling for others to enjoy because they are so good!  What I am about to share will probably make her want to kill me, but there are a few amusing stories about my dear little woman that definitely fall into that category.

Barbara is one of those type of people that will make you laugh without trying.  She doesn't try to be funny usually when she says some of the things she's said or done some of the things she's done at times over the years, but it comes out so amusing that I catch myself chuckling when I think about them.  I have a few of those gems I want to share here as well.

Barb and I of course met when both of us were attending Bible school in Graceville, FL, back in 1990, and we were friends almost a full two years before we even considered dating.   As a matter of fact, the reason I met her in the first place was due to the fact I had an interest in her roommate at the time, a girl named Rachel King, and one night in January of 1990 I finally worked up the nerve to go ask her out.  Lo and behold she wasn't there, and Barb answered the door instead. So, we stood there and talked for hours, and we began to become close after that.  It wasn't until Christmas of that year though when we realized we were put together by God, and we officially became a couple then and were married in May 1992.  However, even in those early days Barb proved to be something unique, and one incident happened on a night in October 1990 that illustrated that point well.

That night, we were going to a Bible study at Dr. Barry Nolan's house just north of Graceville - Dr. Nolan was a devout Christian and a member and adult Sunday School teacher at First Assembly of God there in Graceville, and many of us thought very highly of him because he was a godly man.  Mind you, Graceville is not a big city, and being the small town it was the roads tended to be dark out.  Around Graceville, and into Alabama a couple of miles north, the area is noted for a lot of peanut farms, and one of those lie just south of Dr. Nolan's house on SR 77 north as it snaked toward the Alabama state line.  The way into this peanut farm was by a dirt road that went a ways back into where the farmhouse was, and at night all these driveways looked somewhat alike in the darkness.  Well, in trying to find Dr. Nolan's house, Barb turned down this peanut farmer's driveway, and upon arriving at the farmhouse I knew it wasn't Dr. Nolan's.  Advising Barb of the same, she turned around, and as she was backing up there was a loud "CLANNNGGG!" Turns out she had backed her little Datsun into the guy's peanut silo!  Swaying in the wind with a shrill creaking of its thin metal legs, it got the attention of the farmer, whose porch light came on and out he stepped with this sawed-off shotgun!!  Barb hit the gas, spun some rubber, and we were out of there fast!  It wasn't long though before we actually did arrive at Dr. Nolan's though, but that experience is one I have razzed her about for years.

A second incident happened a couple of years after we were married, when I was attending Southeastern University in Lakeland and we lived in an apartment on Colorado Avenue.  The apartment, originally owned by a retired Pentecostal evangelist by the name of Rev. Clarence Pansler but later bought by a Canadian "snowbird" by the name of Bill Oxford, was originally a makeshift parsonage attached to the back of an old church that then served as a storage shed when we lived there, and inside it had high wooden ceilings in the kitchen.  One day in 1994 I believe, Barb decided she had the inspiration to make homemade guacamole for herself, so she began preparing the stuff to put in a blender to chop up.  For some weird reason, she didn't have the lid on the blender, and the stuff shot upward when she switched it on, subsequentially painting a section of the high kitchen ceiling green!  That stain was still there years later, when we moved in May of 1998 from there.  I am happy to report though her culinary skills have greatly improved since then!

Later on, after we moved to St. Pete, I formally became Catholic and we attended a Byzantine parish on 13th Avenue North, a couple of minutes from our house then, that was called St. Therese of Lesieux.   Now, my wife has her own rules of grammar and pronunciation, and while taking my mother who was visiting one day out for dinner, we drove past the church - it is a beautiful structure, BTW, with an octagonal construction and a beautiful gold cupola crowning the main sanctuary.   So, Barb turns and says to my mom, "Yep, that's where we attend church, Saint Terese of Less Sex!"  After busting out laughing over that, I said, "Well, I certainly hope so - she was a nun after all!" to which my mother almost fell out the door cracking up.  I told that story to our vicar at church this morning too, and his face was so red from laughing that I thought for sure he ruptured a blood vessel.  A Catholic comedian by the name of Doug Brummel also liked the story, and saw it as potential material in his act too! 

A final story involved a drive down Ulmerton Road here in Largo one day a year or two back.  We were stopped at the traffic light, I'd say over around 66th Street, when Barb noticed this car in front of us with a Marines sticker on the back of it.  So, just out of the blue, she says, "Look, he's in the Marine Corpse!"  to which I busted a gut laughing.  The only other person I know with such a unique twist on the English language was probably my late Uncle Bonzo, who more or less could have written a dictionary of the stuff he came up with.

These stories are not meant to embarrass my beloved wife, as I do love her, but rather to show people what fun she can be without even realizing it.  It is one of the things I love about her, and I wouldn't change a thing - life would not be the same without those "Barbara-isms" of hers.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I do, although they are better to hear in person. For some of you that have the privelege of knowing her, don't be surprised if she doesn't come out with one of those gems sometime when you least expect it, as God seems to have given her a gift of unintentional humor.  And, I hope to have many more years of those with her myself, as they are priceless.