If there's one thing Dan and I know how to do well it's laugh together. We've been laughing together for almost 12 years. We laugh at our kids, at each other, at ourselves, and the craziness otherwise frequently known as our lives. These jokes aren't complex, or high humour. We're talking about 'doing it with a goat' here - I kid you not. Please allow me to explain.
In Dr. Seuss's, Green Eggs in Ham, the persistent Sam-I-am urges a kid to try green eggs and ham, to no avail. Sam-I-am invents all kinds of wacky situations to coax the kid to just try the green eggs and ham: "Would you, could you, on a boat? Would you, could you, with a goat?"
The 'would you, could you, with a goat' gets us every time, and these are the kinds of stories we read to our children!
'Doing it with goats' isn't that funny, unless you have someone to share it with. Wait, what? You know what I mean!
I have written about Dan, and written about Dan, and written about Dan. How could I not? He weaves in and out of every aspect of my life. He appears in journal entries, blog posts, in my (forthcoming) book - really our book, because we don't need different books - we read off the same page.
And so today I thought I'd share with you some of what I've written about Dan, and the story of our lives. I hope it makes you smile the same way it does for me.
Context: I'm a 21 year-old university student, and dating a guy named 'Paul'. Dan and I have become friends after repeatedly bumping into each other on the street while walking our dogs. Dan doesn't know I have a boyfriend - yet. We're meeting up for a dog walk.
Dan showed up for our walk with take-out mugs full of hot chocolate in hand – one for each
of us. Melted marshmallows floated on top. The temperature outside had dropped further,
now into the minus twenty range, and steam rose steadily from the tiny hole in the lid. We
were both bundled up, and his gesture filled me with a warmth beyond the contents of the
mug.
As we
rounded the block together, talking about school, and family, and friends, I
knew it was time to tell him the truth, because I knew he didn’t want to just
be my friend.It
took me almost to the end of our walk to build up the nerve to say it, and then
I blurted the words out, “I have a boyfriend.”Dan
stopped walking mid-stance and turned to look at me with a dazed
expression. His jaw literally dropped in
disbelief, and I turned away from his sad eyes, knowing I’d hurt him.“What!”
was all he said. He seemed angry – with
me or with himself, I wasn’t completely sure.I was
so thrown off by his reaction that we walked the rest of the block together in
a delicate silence. I may have mumbled
something to him about walking dogs together, but then it was see you later,
goodbyes, and he was gone. I felt
horrible, fearing I’d lost a truly good person from my life. I had plans to go to the movies with Paul
that night, but even as I sat beside him in the theatre, my mind was
elsewhere. Paul never walks Oreo with me – okay one time in two months, but he
showed up in a leather jacket, with no gloves or hat, and complained about how
cold he was the whole time. When it
came down to it, Paul didn’t take much of an interest in walking dogs with me,
and that somehow translated into the bigger picture of my life and our
relationship.Half
way through the movie, from the corner of my eye, I caught my phone light up in
my purse. When I flipped it open, a text
popped up that read simply, “I was really disappointed to hear that today, but
I’ll still walk dogs with you. ~D”Well,
I wish I could say that I ran out of the movie theatre and into Dan’s arms then
and there - but I didn’t. I sat there
agonizing over having disappointed him, and, once again, considering my
options. The good news was: he didn’t hate me, and he’d gone out of his
way to show me that he still cared. His
text also secretly thrilled me -- how romantic,
I thought, and hmm…I think this guy
really likes me. If I
was acting a bit off, Paul didn’t seem to notice or care. He drove me straight home after the movie,
both of us claiming to be tired from the weekend, and that was the last time we
would see each other as a couple.I
asked to meet Dan for a walk the next day, and strangely, I talked to him about
breaking up with Paul. I was oddly
relieved to talk to my dog-walking friend openly about ‘relationships’, a
subject we both had tactfully avoided while getting to know each other. For the record, he was all for me breaking up
with Paul.My
mind made up, I tried phoning Paul a few times – no answer. I messaged him to call me – no reply. It was as if he knew I wanted to break up
with him, and was avoiding the conversation.
To my annoyance, he remained MIA for the entire day.It was
not until the day after that I finally got an email response from Paul. To my delightful surprise and relief: he broke up with me. It’s
not you, it’s me…blah, blah, blah.
To this day, Dan doesn’t let me forget that I got dumped. When I recount the story of how we met, and
get to the part about breaking up with Paul, he always corrects me with a
smile, “You mean, he broke up with you –
remember?”I
could only laugh at my luck. That Paul had
broken up with me first made my day.
He’d beaten me to the punch. And
that he’d done so in an email spoke to his true character. When I told Dan about
the break up, we of course had to meet for an emergency dog walk to discuss the
details. He asked me to go out to lunch
with him the following day. He wasn’t
taking any chances this time around, I guess.
Our lunch date marked a shift in the way we viewed each other – it was
like plugging a light into the wall, illuminating an intimacy that had always
been there in waiting. We became
inseparable from then on out. We walked
our dogs together several times every day, and made jokes about Shadow and
Sasha – Sumo and Oreo’s neighbourhood look-a-likes – anytime one of us forgot a
bag for poop and scoop, or our dog went on someone’s lawn. “Bad dog, Sasha!” we’d remark loudly,
snickering, or “This way Shadow!” rolling our eyes at each other, and stifling
laughter, creating inside jokes we share to this day.
***
Let the jokes continue, Dan Purdham!
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