A PERSONAL MOMENT

Please indulge me for a personal observation.

Today is our 43rd wedding anniversary.

Yes, that’s right. Forty-three years. (We were mere toddlers when we wed.)

It's trite to say it, but it doesn't seem that long. (I’m resisting the temptation to crack a Rodney Dangerfield type joke here. After 43 years, I am well aware that leads to nothing but trouble.)

What’s the secret to such longevity in a marriage? Quite frankly, I don’t know.

I asked my wife, and she said, “Well, we’re nice to each other.”

Here we are after we met in 1967

If you want anything deeper than that, you’ll have to go ask Dr. Phil.

We actually marked the occasion last night by going out to dinner because tonight I have a basketball game to cover. Miami is playing North Carolina in Coral Gables. (Maybe patience and understanding, at least on her part, are other factors in the matter of longevity.)

This is not the first time that sports has intruded on our anniversary.

One year I was in New Orleans all week covering a Super Bowl and Virginia was back home. We went out to dinner the next night after I hurried back to Jackson, and since I had noted this conflict in a column the day before, someone we didn’t even know wished us a “happy anniversary” as he passed our table.

That was kind of nice.

Getting married in January can be different from, say, June.

When I called the hotel to make reservations for a brief honeymoon in Santa Catalina, I wondered why I had no trouble getting a room even though though I had called only a few days ahead. Turned out we were the only guests in the hotel.

At night after dinner, only one other customer was in the second-story spot where we went for a nightcap. He sat at the bar and talked to the bartender. We sat at a table and looked across the water at the lights of Newport Beach.

Winter apparently was not the “high season” for overnight tourists on the island.

If you have indulged me by reading this far, thank you. I just wanted to note the occasion in this blog.

And you did know I was kidding with that remark about being toddlers when we got married, didn’t you?