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Coprolite Newsletter, May 2006Some Things Just Take a While Marriage is like food. Now, I suppose you're thinking that what I mean is that marriage is nourishing, it sustains us, and when it's done well it makes life infinitely more interesting and pleasurable. Well, of course all of that is true. But what I really had in mind was a little more prosaic. I was thinking that marriage has a lot in common with that can of beans on your pantry shelf. Before the reader takes offense (especially if the reader is someone I'm married to), let me explain. First, I have to give you a little history that I ran across in Discover Magazine. Back in 1810, Peter Durand from Britain patented his great new invention: the tin can. Don't laugh, it was a pretty big deal. Food could now be sealed up and safely preserved for a long time, and it could be done quickly and in great quantities. It was a wonderful idea. Unfortunately, it wasn't until 1858 that Ezra Warner from Connecticut patented the can opener. Just think--for almost five decades, there was all this wonderfully preserved food but no convenient way to get at it. How did people open cans during those years? Hack them with axes? Pound them with rocks? Or did they just save them on the groaning shelves of their cupboards in the hope that some day there would be a way to open them? It's amazing that a wonderful thing like the tin can didn't really become practical and easy to use until almost fifty years after it was invented. Well, since my wife and I celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary last year, it occurs to me that marriage, like the tin can, gets much more workable after five decades or so. This is true on many different levels. Take communications. Newlyweds struggle mightily--and often in vain--to figure out what their spouses are really saying. Often the problem is that they're not really saying anything, but should be. For example, when Mickey and I got married, she was used to cooking for four people. Her mother worked, so when Mickey got home from her high school or college classes, she started dinner for her parents, herself, and her brother. After our wedding, she still tended to cook about the right amount for four. Now, I had been brought up as a proud member of the "clean plate club," which was promoted during World War II to keep kids from wasting food. So I manfully ate the massive quantities of dinner she cooked every night. Then, since I ate all the food in sight, she thought she'd better fix a little more the next time. This went on for a couple of months, while I gained about forty pounds. Somehow, we finally talked about the situation and ended the cycle of caloric escalation. After fifty years or so, a wife no longer makes the mistake of failing to discuss any of her husband's behavior about which she has any doubts or misgivings. But communication in marriage doesn't improve only because you're more likely to be open about things you didn't talk about before. You also get a lot more efficient at the whole process. After fifty years or so, a wife can convey paragraphs in a glance, volumes in a facial expression. Even husbands can sometimes be surprisingly articulate with a grunt or shrug. Marriage gets more efficient and workable in other ways, too. Fighting, for example. Every couple occasionally has a dispute about something or other. Fights early in a marriage are devastating and emotional. It takes a week to get over a minor scrap. After fifty years, you can have a relatively knock-down-and-drag-out battle some morning, and by lunch time you can't remember what it was about. In other words, once you get really good at a relationship, you can handle all phases of it in less time. And I do mean "all phases." Let's see, what aspects of married life haven't we touched on yet? Oh yes, sex. I'll wait now while all readers under the age of fifty leave the room. Tum, de dum, de dum... Are they gone? Okay, we can continue. The reason we can't talk to those relative youngsters about having a love life after five decades or so of marriage is that all grown children devoutly believe that after their own conception, nothing of that sort ever happened in their parents' bedroom again. The fact is that this aspect of marriage, like all the others, tends to get more efficient over the years. So, what's wrong if that means it goes a little quicker? Isn't that the definition of efficiency? Anyhow, I'm sure these few examples have shown you the lesson that all married people should take from the lowly tin can. What starts out as a beautiful idea really needs to stick around for a few years to reach its potential. Somehow I don't think frozen TV dinners will ever convey as important a lesson. ––Wayne Adams To read other Coprolite Columns, return to Newsletter Archives. 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