Remote Controls, Part I

My wife and I celebrated our nine-month anniversary last night. And by “celebrated,” I mean I spent all night playing Xbox with DA and Solo while my wife… hmm… actually, I have no idea what she did last night. I’m pretty sure she was upstairs watching TV during the Xboxfest. I do remember eating dinner together. I kind of lost track of her after that. She probably just cried herself to sleep. Good times.

Sadly, this was actually one of our better anniversaries. This is just a textbook example of “clueless male syndrome,” the main issue women deal with during the newlywed phase. Surprisingly, her morale is still relatively high. She has high hopes that she can fix this genetic defect with a steady regimen of nagging and browbeating. Time will tell.

Of course, there’s another side to this coin. I too face obstacles as a contestant in this newlywed game. Here’s my top three:

3. The Xbox: My wife and my Xbox have never really gotten along, but lately it’s become pretty bitter. The problem here is that they view each other as a source of competition for my love and attention. It wasn’t always this way. They coexisted happily during our engagement, but things disintegrated shortly after the marriage ceremony. My Xbox was truly hurt at being left behind while my wife and I went on our honeymoon. I didn’t want to exclude the Xbox, buy my wife insisted. To this day, my Xbox has never really forgiven her for that.

At this point, they can barely stand to be in the same room with each other. They exchange dirty looks. They backstab one another. They spread vicious rumors. The tension between them is palpable, and I’m caught in the middle. I try not to play favorites, and I generally do my best to make it clear that I love them both equally. They like to “keep score” though. Whenever I spend a quite evening alone with one, the other demands equal time the following night. While I try desperately to make them both happy, the fact is neither is ever satisfied. You can imagine the strain it puts on our marriage.

2. Pizza: You’d think my wife and I would be able to order a pizza every once in awhile without it tearing apart our marriage. You’d think. Unfortunately, our pizza preferences couldn’t be more opposite. We can’t even settle for the typical half and half compromise, as that would entail us reaching a consensus on a sauce or crust type. That’s right. We can’t even decide between hand-tossed, pan, cheese-stuffed, or thin crust without having protracted negotiations between teams of lawyers. And then there’s the sauce. My wife will vacillate between pesto and Alfredo sauce, and I’m stuck throwing my hands in the air over why we can’t just have “regular pizza sauce” on our pizza? I won’t even go into the difficulties we have in agreeing on toppings, mainly because we’ve never actually gotten to that point.

The worst part of this is that my wife only eats a few slices to begin with. Because of this, we can’t even use a pizza buffet as a means to sidestep these issues. While I view the pizza buffet as a personal challenge to bankrupt the establishment with pizza consumption, my wife continually sabotages my efforts by filling up on salad and breadsticks, and whatever other non-pizza items happen to be featured in the buffet.

The only solution is to order two pizzas, one for each of us. Of course, this too has a price. My pizza and any leftovers will be polished off in a 24-hour period. Unfortunately, my wife’s leftovers (of which there are plenty) linger in the fridge like a science experiment. I’ve even seen her toss out stale leftover pizza, which, as we all know, is in stark violation of the 11th Commandment. It’s not uncommon for me to openly weep at the sight of wasted pizza. Honestly, she could have lit my paycheck on fire in front of me and received a more subdued reaction.

The point is, we simply don’t share the same love of pizza. For instance, I’ve never heard her refer to pizza as “sweet, sweet nectar” like I do from time to time. That really sums it up right there.

1. Remote Controls: This pertains mainly to usage and etiquette. All I’m going to say here is that we’ve been married about nine months now, and roughly, if I had to ballpark it, I’d guess that I’ve spent 80% of that time searching for the remote control.

Don’t think for an instant that I’m going to leave it at that. This is merely the introduction… the first part in an ongoing series dissecting my thoughts on remote controls. By breaking this topic into segments, I’m hoping that I can continually bring this issue to the forefront with each update and discuss each aspect in appropriate length. Whereas, if I were to combine all my thoughts on remote controls into one massive post, some of these thoughts would get lost in the shuffle, and their societal and cultural impact would be lessened.

Finally, I will delineate the parts with Roman numerals, as generally, the most important aspects of our society are numbered in this fashion: Super bowls, Rocky movies, Star Wars prequels, etc.

And with that said, be on the lookout for Part II…