​Marriage is a mutual support network. As you take your vows, words reinforcing that come your way: “Love and cherish” “Through sickness and health.”
 
You kinda understand the point at the time, but not really. You haven’t lived it yet.
 
So, yes, you back your spouse up over the years. You do your best to care for the other person and split duties as best you can, but that still doesn’t drive the lesson fully home.
 
As our three kids left home for college and jobs, my wife and I rediscovered many things about “our” relationship, most of them good. Raising kids frequently puts the focus on their lives and making sure you prepare them as best you can to be productive human beings in this wild and crazy world we inhabit. Even with great parenting, that’s probably not completely possible.
 
One of the things that becomes more apparent to us at this stage of life is the mutual support of each other. On simple days, that’s just a recognition of our division of duties around the house or in the yard. On more complex days, that delves into our emotional and psychological well-being and offering an ear to the other, voicing perspective. Sometimes it just means being there for the other person. That provides comfort and companionship.
 
The genesis for this column, amusingly enough, came from a ritual we’ve developed fairly recently. It isn’t something that occurs every day. But it does encompass recognition we both have of each other where the other person needs help and we provide it. Mutual support.
 
Debbie is athletic. She works out regularly. She spends a lot of time doing much of our yard work, planting, moving, lifting, digging, cutting, trimming, using power tools. As you might imagine, she is often extremely sore because those are muscles we don’t always use and when we do, we aggravate them.
 
She requires assistance afterwards. I provide that. I Kinesio tape the painful parts of her body. It’s the least I can do. It makes me feel productive and useful knowing I’ve helped her out, and the tape does provide extra support to heal her aches and pains.
 
In return, she clips away at skin between toes on my right foot where I had a painful blister and maddening soreness for months. Bit by bit, every five or six days, she gets out the clippers and digs out the pieces of skin contributing to the pain. It gets better every day as the sore spot shrinks under her expert medical technique.
 
You may find those two examples amusing. You may have similar ones in your own marriage, like cutting their hair during the coronavirus, even if it’s a bad haircut. Or you may find yourself playing amateur psychologist during this time of isolation to give your partner just the little bit of sanity that prevents them raging uncontrollably (a severe concern these days).
 
Regardless, over the years we develop mutual support probably never envisioned during those initial marital vows. We learn mutual support. We learn to give and do it in new ways over and over.
 
The marriage grows. Our self-awareness increases. When done well, we become better individuals and as a collective unit.

​“Incorrigible buffoon.” What a great line, eh?
 
Language is awesome. I love playing with it. You can motivate others. Teach them. Drive people in a specific direction. Get them to think along novel lines. It’s about word choice and how you string them together.
 
Certain words jump out. It may be history you have with them or something about the way they are pronounced that gets you humming.
 
I remember over 40 years ago when the younger brother of the woman I was dating at the time heard me say the word “spectacular.” You would have thought I invented electricity. He went off the rest of the evening calling everything he saw or heard “spectacular” solely because he loved the way the sound of the word rolled off his tongue. There’s a lot to be said for that.
 
Just last week I was in a cemetery, meeting with a family. I drove up in a golf cart. They were eating Taco Bell. I asked how “Taco Smells” tasted. There were two women eating and a son, a 9-year-old. OMG, I made a new best friend because of calling it “Taco Smells.” He decided to tell me a joke in response: Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road? Because he didn’t have guts.

Pretty good for a 9-year-old boy. But the funnier thing is I spoke with the mother the next day in following up with her on some cemetery services, and what did the boy remember about the encounter? Taco Smells. Not much else. He was having a blast with the word.
 
The nightly news has a field day with adjectives. Alarming attacks. Distressing diets. Horrific hurricanes. Terrible tidal waves. If you listen closely to the announcer and the words his or her writers have inserted into their mouths, you’ll hear a ton of adjectives designed to drive your thought process in a specific direction. It’s not reporting the news. It’s using words to direct you.
 
Words matter. For many reasons. They’re also fun and entertaining. They’re meant to be played around with to see if you can grab someone’s attention, make them think.
 
Bombastic.
 
Understated.
 
Marvelous.
 
Magnificent.
 
Blossom.
 
So many words to describe so many things about life and the people we encounter. Words make me think about the people we meet on a daily basis, and how we define them in our minds.
 
Loser.
 
Non-listener.
 
Excitable.
 
Relaxed.
 
And sometimes it takes more than one word. There’s the snake oil salesman, someone we all know. There’s the person who knows his stuff. The guy who thinks too much of himself. We don’t really have the one word to describe the individual so we have to string a few together to categorize that person.
 
This past week, I had a customer write to me about the job I did working with her family through a grieving period. Her words mattered. She chose them carefully, identifying specifically what I did to help them through a very difficult and sensitive situation.

Her shared words gave me a terrific feeling. I beamed with appreciation. She’s not a professional writer, but I wrote back and told her she had another career waiting in the writing profession if she wanted to pursue it. Don’t underestimate the written word.

​Two weeks ago I drove home from work. Bored, tired, I wanted something to do.
 
I thought to myself, “Maybe I’ll go see a movie tomorrow afternoon on my day off.”
 
Then I remembered, “Oh, I thought I could see a movie, but I can’t.”
 
A few days later I wanted to grab a cup of coffee with my friend Peter. Or perhaps see if he wanted to have lunch. I was pumped.

“Oh, I thought, I can’t do that. We’re not allowed to dine out or sit together at a coffee shop.” I guess that was out, too.
 
I have a good friend from a previous job and I like to see him on a regular basis. He lives in Madison and is a great conversationalist and fun to have a few drinks with because we hound each other, tell funny stories and pretend like we know what is going on in the world.
 
“Oh, I thought, I can’t do that. We’re not allowed into a bar. I can’t meet him out somewhere to order an Old Fashioned.”
I got to thinking about church and upcoming services. “Oh, I thought, I can’t do that. We’re streaming them online. I’ll have to read father’s sermon again this week rather than hearing it in person and talking to friends in the congregation.”
 
I miss all those things, and more. I keep thinking, “Oh, I thought I could do that.” But I forgot. I can’t. We aren’t allowed to do those things now, and it depresses me. It’s a sad part of our condition with the virus circulating.
 
Without thinking, my mind considered going to a museum in Milwaukee a couple of weeks back. WHAT WAS I THINKING? “Oh, I thought, museums were one of the first public places shut down.” How could I have forgotten that?
 
This past week a couple of things changed. We are allowed to play golf. I got in some serious social distancing golf Thursday by myself in the rain, with one other group in front of me. I passed them halfway through the round and they drove way off to the side, probably because they were more scared that I might him them with an errant tee shot than anything else. We waved and shouted golfer support words to each other. It was nice.
 
I played again Friday with my younger brother and we did some social distancing while walking the course. Since we are both bad golfers, we stayed way away from each other trying to find our respective balls. But it was fun, and was our thing to look forward to last week.
 
This week, I’m sure there are going to be more situations where I say to myself, “Oh, I thought,” and then I’m going to remember I can’t do that right now. It’s tough. These things affect our emotional mindsets as our lives are constrained and we look for the positive in the darkness.
 
Things will open up. I know this. It takes time. It can be oh so hard to bear that in mind on a day-to-day basis.

Because we keep saying to ourselves “Oh, I thought I could do this,” only to remember we’re in a time of chaos and change, affecting our perspective and our fundamental expectations in life. At some point, when those thoughts occur to us, we will be able to do those things again. Until then, we have to recalibrate our expectations.

​Many things humans do cause unintended consequences. Who foresaw the problems the gasoline-powered car would cause? Long-term systemic air pollution. Prime land paved over. Congestion commuting. Losing touch with nature.
 
The car freed us and tied us down. It’s given us way greater mobility as individuals than at any other time in history. Wake up, drive 43 miles to your job, do your work, drive home. We don’t think too much about the routine. Yes, the vehicle is great to get us there and to other engagements, but paying for gasoline, repairs are other unintended consequences like those noted above.
 
When technology is adopted or a major change comes our way, we don’t always think through in advance what will happen in the months or years to come. That may be because we don’t have enough time to think through the changes or solely because as a species we don’t play out all the scenarios before proceeding. We act. We respond. We adapt.
 
There are going to be a LOT of unintended consequences from COVID-19. Some we already know and some we won’t learn about for years.
 
People wearing masks. Getting your temperature checked before you step into your manufacturing building in the morning or at a sporting event. Staggered work schedules so only a certain number of people are in your office space on a given day. Giving the foot kick to someone when you greet that person instead of the longstanding traditional handshake. All these things are happening now, and more are to come, both significant and insignificant in terms of how we live.
 
My wife and I have adjusted on many fronts. We maintain distance from others while out in public and appropriately wear our masks. We’re finding new ways to say hello and greet others.
 
One of the more amusing unintended consequences of how the virus has affected my routine is the piling up of magazines on our bedroom floor as I wait for our fitness facility to reopen. I miss that 3-day-a-week ritual for many reasons – the bonding with others as we go about workouts; telling a joke to a few buddies; the sense of accomplishment and stress reduction after the workout is finished.

One of the things I always did was put my finished magazines into the rack so others could have a good read while they rode the stationary bike or used any of the other machines where they could maintain fixed eyesight. I liked to share the magazines, and it was a chance for them to be reused before going into recycling. There was a little sense of doing the right thing, and giving to others.
 
Now the magazines pile up. It’s been six weeks. I don’ want to throw them into the recycling bin. At the same time, the information in each magazine slowly loses its value as the information machine in our society churns along.
 
I don’t know how much longer I can hold out. There are seven issues waiting right now. The pile grows. But there are rays of light that things will open up a bit in few weeks.

I’m hoping so. The next month’s editions are coming. And if I can’t drop them off at our fitness facility, I may actually have to change my behavior and bring them to our chiropractor. 

​“HEY, PORCUPINE!”
 
Quick, where does that line come from?
 
If you said, “a Three Stooges’ skit,” you get to ring the bell. Bong, bong, bong, you got it right. Have a prize, Bubba.
 
If you weren’t able to place the phrase, here’s a bit of context. Curly, the humor-inducing, big bellied, shaved tight hair member of the threesome was typically the butt of their antics on the TV screen. Mostly Moe would plink, bonk, dunk, and conk him, but Larry got into the act, too.  They debuted in 1922. Almost a hundred years ago.
 
I bring up the Stooges because they were early introducers of slapstick humor and sarcasm to our society. If you listen closely to the dialogue, there are barbs directed repeatedly at some of the silly and stupid institutional directives of the day. Sarcasm, criticism, irony and putting down figures of authority is now almost a daily given in 2020.
 
I’m confident that criticizing leadership began well before the Three Stooges. But it was likely more direct and personal before we, as a species, started watching the tube. The Stooges brought it mainstream.
 
The putdowns in their skits released others from their daily routine of work-eat-sleep, work-eat-sleep. Some leisure time was being created, so an opening was there for entertainment to fill it. They jumped on it.
 
Until that point in history, if you look back, your “leisure” or “non-work” time consisted of going to church or reading a few books in the course of your lifetime. The Stooges filled a void as we moved towards becoming a mass society, both in terms of the production of goods, but also in terms of the words and images we served up to others.
 
I believe this is a major problem with our society today. Many times I’ve had this conversation with a good friend of mine regarding some of the cynicism and anger that so many people display these days, whether it’s in a personal conversation or some online format. My friend cites that, “Things are too easy and EVERYTHING is readily available.” His point being that the challenges of hunting our own food and building our shelter are no longer “things” we do on any type of regular basis, except for an extremely limited number of people where that is their livelihood.
 
This notion of his is a corollary to another friend he knows, whose opinion is simply, “The reason we’re so messed up is that we don’t kill our own food anymore.” That used to take up time, energy, focus. And when you got home at the end of the day, you collapsed into bed exhausted. You didn’t have time for humor.
 
As jobs and lives changed with mass production and segmentation of jobs, we compartmentalized. We got good at one thing and kept doing it, to the exclusion of the basic necessities of life. We went to supermarkets for food, visited the butcher, had a plumber, electrician and carpenter to call on for trade-specific help.
 
Gaining creature comforts meant losing control, and the Stooges captured this by poking fun at themselves and their ineptitude, as well as the things in the world that we’ve come less and less to have firsthand experience with. The world depersonalized and the Stooges thumbed their noses at it.
 
We still need that humor today, if for no other reason than to give us a reality-check for the world in which we live. “HEY, PORCUPINE” was Moe’s way of joking about Curly’s bristle-cut hair.
 
Knocking Larry and Curly’s heads together to the clonking sound of coconuts can help us laugh through another day of the complex stuff we can’t master. The slapstick is relatable