Warning: the following post contains innuendo, double entendre, tasteless humor, and disco music references. Proceed at your own risk.

I often wonder how I got so lucky with my wife, the exceptional and clearly-out-of-my-league Jess. Not so much about how I got her (I really believe that was God’s doing, with an assist from alcohol), but how we’ve managed to stay so happy 22 years into it. I mean, let’s face it: I was no prize when we got married, and now, I’m even less so, and even though the still lovely and long-suffering Jess remains my dream girl, the years of living with me have taken a toll on her.

We no longer do nearly as much of the things that we used to do constantly. We don’t drink much anymore, although really that’s no great loss. We don’t travel much due to a lack of funds and abundance of dogs, as well as the fact that we both really like it right here. What we used to refer to as the “carnal Olympics” has slowly shifted from a daily occurrence to a weekly to a “Hey, we oughta do that again before we forget how” basis (although we both spend a lot of time reflecting fondly on all of the gold and silver medals we’ve accrued over the years). It kind of hurts to have to admit that we’ve become boring, middle-aged adults.

Correction: we’ve become happy, boring, middle-aged adults, and I think the key is laughter. We laugh a lot. We laugh when times are good, but we also laugh also as much when times are bad. I’ve always been able to make her laugh (and yes, laughing at me counts), and I’ve always thought she is one of the most genuinely funny women on earth. It also helps that the one aspect of our lives and personalities that hasn’t matured at all is our senses of humor.

I’ll give you an example: A couple of weeks ago, we were getting mom’s house ready for a renter. Now this is the house that we all grew up in, and it was killing me to think of renting it, but I couldn’t afford to leave it empty. So there we were, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, and I was getting more and more depressed the whole time. We had decided that we needed to re-caulk the tub and shower, so I was trying to get rid of the old caulking. If you’ve ever done that, you know it’s no easy task. Lots of rubbing and scraping, rubbing and scraping.

I find that often, when doing a mindlessly repetitive job, my mind tends to wander. I get into a rhythm, and my subconscious will drag some old song up out of the vaults of my memory. So it was that I found myself scrape, scrape, scraping away, with the chorus from K.C. and the Sunshine Band’s disco classic, “Shake Your Booty” running on an endless loop in my head. As if that wasn’t bad enough (have you ever noticed, when this happens, it’s never a good song, or even one you can remember completely?), my subconscious kicked into overdrive, and “shake, shake, shake . . . shake, shake, shake . . . shake your booooo-tayyyy! shake your booooo-tayyyy!” became “scrape, scrape, scrape . . . scrape, scrape, scrape . . . scrape your caulk off! scrape your caulk off!” complete with the horn part.

Not a pleasant thing to have running through your mind over and over again, but I have to admit that, while distressing, the sheer stupidity of it did kind of cheer me up. When we took a smoke break, I told Jess about it, and she thought it was pretty funny. Then we sang a couple of choruses, just trying to get it out of our heads. It didn’t work, but we laughed and laughed. That was it for the rest of the day. Every time she’d come check on me, she’d ask, “Get your caulk all scraped off yet?” and I’d stretch my aching back and say, “No, and all this caulk scraping is getting pretty painful,” and we’d laugh some more. When we’d take a break (and I’ve found that frequent breaks are a key to making a bad job last a really long time), it was because I needed a break from scraping my caulk. When it was time to go back to work, she’d tell me, “You’re not gonna get your caulk scraped off sitting here,” and we’d laugh again.

I suggested, at one point, that perhaps she’d like a turn at scraping the caulk off, but she seemed to feel quite strongly that it was my caulk, and if anybody was going to scrape it off, it was going to be me. She also reminded me that I prefer it when she sticks to caulk application. I conceded the point, and we laughed some more. It really brightened up my whole day. In fact, we got about two or three day’s worth of caulk jokes out of that. It’s a good sign, when the jokes outlast the task.

That, I think, is really the secret to our success. We make each other laugh. A lot. About everything. There is very little that is off-limits. We both recognize our individual and collective shortcomings as sources of humor, and frequently, the more embarrassing the better.

Nothing makes us laugh harder than when we’re outside, having a smoke, or playing with the dogs, and one of us gets that shocked, deer-in-the-headlights look, and full-body clench that signals a sudden, impending digestive disaster (you other middle-agers know what I’m talking about). Of course, when that happens, only one of us is laughing; the other is too busy trying to hurry to the bathroom without actually moving anything between the neck and the knees (it’s funny to them too, but, in a digestive crisis, seal integrity is the paramount concern). For that one, the laughs come later, either from relief or embarrassment.

We spend a lot of time laughing about things that happened years, or even decades, ago; like the fart-heard-round-the-world at Stonehenge, or the time I got her to zap herself with an electric fence (I told you I’m no prize), or the time she gave me a concussion “accidentally” slamming a hatch lid on my head, or the time we both fell through the floor when replacing her mom’s living room floor (it’s really kind of a wonder we’re still alive).

We laugh about the way she used to mispronounce zealot (zeelot), or the time I absent-mindedly thought a bunch of calves in a field were full-grown miniature cows (“Why would anybody bother raising those? You’re not gonna get much meat.”). Yes, we are frequently idiots, but we’re happy idiots. And that’s the important thing. Much more important than dignity, or pride, or success, or financial security (thank God, because we’re usually running pretty short on all those).

I really think that, if you want a good relationship, find someone who makes you laugh, and thinks you’re funny too.

P.S. Just in case you don’t have that stupid song running through your head, here’s a link: K.C. and the Sunshine Band, “Shake Your Booty” . It’s also funny how easy it would be to make the entire song fit caulk-scraping. Also, now that would make a great video. Enjoy!