Dad

We first met as the glaciers were receding from the last ice age. I caught her eye as we were both protesting global warming. I couldn't help noticing she looked pretty hot against all that whiteness. Of course she pretended to ignore me as I came from the clan of the extra woolly mammoth (we don't own sweaters).
Skipping ahead slightly, it was actually my motorcycle that finally brought us together. We both faithfully watched Star Trek but it ended at 6 pm and we had a night class that started at 6pm. So on those nights I ran out of my apartment and jumped on my motorcycle, picked her up on the way and (we could drive on campus at the time) parked at the door. Thanks to my superior driving skills punctuated by her high pitched shrieking in my right ear we were never more than 3 minutes 42 seconds late.
Since then we've shared a few laughs. So that's about it for us, the rest is history.
Oh, what's that you say, isn't there more? Well I suppose I could share an old memory or two. First let's be clear that the Vendi-kins didn't immediately recognize that she was crazy wild about me, in fact she hid it quite well. So we grudgingly became friends for several years and then started dating despite knowing each other well.
I convinced Wendy that camping would be a life changing experience. So one morning at 3AM I picked her up in the dorms and sped up the coast in my 67 Mustang to Big Sur. We found a campsite on the river and I got the tent out but couldn't find the stakes. Here's where I shone. I pulled out my cub-scout knife and carved stakes out of big twigs. I think Wendy swooned at this display of survival skills. I got the tent up and staked down before I noticed the real stakes in the trunk and promptly hid them. We ate well the first day and managed bread and water the next day before I ran out of money. She might have questioned my fiscal planning skills but I had taken my shirt off in front of her (pretty riske in the old days) and scrambled her brains for days. On the way back I ran out of gas and figured Coleman stove fluid would do just fine. My Mustang did not agree and sounded like a machine gun coming down the road until we found a gas station. How did I pay? The very first credit cards were for gasoline and my DAD in his infinite wisdom had given me one. Thanks again Bebo.
That reminds me. On our honeymoon I planned the first three nights very well. After that I figured we could just wander around for 10 days or so. Wendy suggested an actual destination might be in order and that's how we ended up in Vancover. Of course, you guessed it, we ran out of money on the way back. Wendy decided to plan our trips from about that time around.
Wait, there was one exception. We went to Europe after one year of marriage. I knew in my travel wisdom that you can always find someplace to lay your weary head without fussing with hotel reservations. So we landed in Paris with our backpacks at 9pm local time and no place to stay. After no more then a couple hundred places we tried were full I noticed Wendy seemed to be getting frustrated. The, Eureka, a hotel with room. The place for thr stars was strangely empty. The yawning clerk let us in and gave us a key, pointing up the stairs. I guess not every hotel has to have an elevator. The exercise after walking around Paris all night with our backpacks felt good. After quite a while on the stairs we hit the wall, literally, it was dark and the top floor came up unexpectedly. Our "room" was at the end of a long hall. There was a small bathroom on the samw floor but neither of us were that desperate.
Finally, we were ready to crash. Wendy pulled back the covers. The sheets only went partway down the bed. We slept in our clothes. We woke up at dawn, went all the way back down the stairs....the front door was latched and locked and bolted, etc. So we went back up the now familiar stairs and slept most of the day. Our first mission in Paris was finding a hotel with at least one star. We found one with a room and its very own bathroom and hugged each other as we jumped up and down while spinning. Yes we were excited and this hotel had a star!
Can we say that Wendy did not trust my vast store of male knowledge and judgement at this point? As she explained, guys and girls just travel differently. I realized she was right, sleeping indoors and having a clean bathroom wasn't so bad.
As you have surmised, the key to any successful relationship is compromise. Of course in a marriage always strive to have the last words, "yes dear."
Now, if I were to try and be serious I might search for the words that could convey my love for Wendy, but of course those words do not exist. Suffice it to say that we are inextricably bound together by our shared life and love, forever.

Your Missak