Self-Indulgent Romantic Musings

The Internet’s lousy with memes these days, but I saw one today that caught my attention. (Actually I saw it here, but the above links to the original author.) Anyway…specifically, question #4 caught my attention:

4. Rather than discuss the typical characteristics of someone you’d desire (sense of humor, good body, etc.), I’m going to focus on the little details. Rank them in order of preference, with #7 being the one you consider more important than the others and #1 being the one you consider the least important:


1. Good fashion sense,


2. Ability to dance well,


3. Encyclopedic knowledge,


4. Odorless feet,


5. Quick-wittedness,


6. Even tempered nature, and


7. Likes the same music, movies, and/or television

Looking at that list, I realized how much my priorities have changed since my single days. Before I met Steve, my wishlist would have looked like this, least-important to most:

1. Even-tempered nature

2. Odorless feet

3. Good fashion sense

4. Ability to dance well

5. Encyclopedic knowledge

6. Quick-wittedness

7. Likes the same music, movies, and/or television

Then I met Steve, and he was absolutely nothing like that shiny ideal image in my head. Steve was into Metallica and Black Sabbath and Kiss, and he expressed a disbelieving horror when I confessed my deep and abiding love for John Denver. He couldn’t understand my Star Trek addiction at all. He couldn’t understand my failure to appreciate the comic genius of Beavis and Butthead.

Witty conversationalist? Uh…no. Steve is the strong silent type. So taciturn is he that one might know him for years and never guess at the mind-boggling trove of information he possesses beneath that untalkative exterior. Need to know some obscure fact about world history, geography, ancient cultures, or who played the Third Cop From The Left in some unremarkable movie he watched once five years ago? Steve’s your man. Want a bit of fluffy idle social chitchat? You’re pretty much out of luck there.

He can pull off a nice two-step, but that’s the full extent of his dancing expertise. His fashion sense can be summed up in one word: Wrangler.

This post mustn’t be misconstrued as a complaint. I love Steve, and most of the time our differences complement each other beautifully. Almost any kind of crisis can come up and one of us knows exactly how to handle it, even if the other is clueless. It’s just that looking at that list really made me think about how expectations and reality totally part ways sometimes, and you end up getting what you would have wanted if you’d only known to want it.

So here is my list, rearranged so that it now describes Steve, with 1 being least applicable to him and 7 most applicable.

1. Likes the same music, movies, and/or television. (Not.)

2. Good fashion sense. (Wrangler jeans and Megadeath tee shirts never go out of style, right?)

3. Quick-wittedness. (I’m assuming this refers to verbal wittiness. If we’re talking about the ability to respond quickly to an unexpected emergency, then Steve scores a lot higher on this one.)

4. Ability to dance well. (As long as it’s a two-step.)

5. Odorless feet. (I never thought about it until I saw this meme, but Steve has remarkably odorless feet.)

6. Encyclopedic knowledge. (Seriously, he’s like a circus act if you hit a subject that interests him.)

7. Even-tempered nature. (Ironically, the trait that mattered not a bit to me fifteen years ago is Steve’s strongest suit, and one that I’ve come to prize above all the others.)

Funny how things turn out. But really, I wonder how many long-time-married people would have the same reaction I did to seeing that list. Most of them, I think.

Falling in love is such an involuntary phenomenon sometimes.