And yet, we stay together

My husband and I have rather different ideas of what passes for well-spent time parked in front of the television. Especially on a work night.

See, if I had control of the remote tonight, we would be watching something like…Ace of Cakes, or that thing about the meteors, or possibly Dateline NBC.

Instead, I’m in here, and he’s out there watching Final Destination 3.

There are two things about this that drove me out of the room.

One is that it is a work night. To me, the idea of starting a movie which won’t be finished until 11:30 at night…when you will be rudely awakened by the alarm clock at 5:00 the next morning…is…well, how to put this kindly?

Um. Well. It’s…maybe a touch…

Moronic, OK? I think it is downright moronic. See, I want to be in bed within the next forty minutes. If I were watching television tonight, I would have quite intentionally picked something that would be over before then.

Not something that ended an hour and a half after I wanted to be asleep.

The other thing is, I’m a well-documented wuss when it comes to scary movies. I can’t stand gratuitous violence. I don’t like to be surprised that way. Well. In fact, I don’t really like to be surprised, period. Not in the ‘and now we all jump out and yell {SURPRISE, BOO, HAPPY LEIF ERIKSON DAY}’ kind of way.

I mean, Life is full of surprises. I’ve come to accept that. I know that whatever I think is going to happen is subject to being changed on me at the last second by forces outside of my control. I’m OK with that. I’m even OK with sudden drastic changes. Although I reserve the right to rant endlessly about them, I’m actually fairly good at keeping my overall footing as things change.

So, surprises are OK.

I just don’t want living ones jumping out of dark corners at me.

So a movie which is all about gratuitous violence jumping out of dark corners and tearing people apart or whatever-all else is going on in there (by the every-five-seconds bursts of wild screaming, banging and other noise, I’m guessing there’s quite a bit of it in this movie) (memo to me: buy darling husband a set of wireless headsets), is really not for me.

Not even a little bit.

Which brings me to my Question of the Day: How is it that a man who loves and adores movies of all sorts not only managed to marry a woman like me, and why we are still together?

Seriously. People have divorced for less, people.

He’s one of those people who will rush to a theater the same day a movie he wants to see opens. He doesn’t care if he is part of a capacity crowd. It doesn’t bother him if some kid is kicking the back of his chair for two and a half hours, or that some idiot child is blathering into her cell phone the entire time about who is dating whom when and OH MY GAWD I KNOW I SAW THAT TOO!

I will wait until the last possible day and then? I might just wait for the DVD. I don’t like going to the theater. I dislike being crowded in there with all those other people. Listening to them talk or shift or cough or giggle or whatever, all the way through the movie. I don’t like the stale smelling theater or the sucrose-substance coating on the floor that makes walking a cardiovascular workout rivaling any treadmill.

And also, I am ever-so-NOT above the ultimate sacrilege: I will walk away from a movie. Right in front of God and everybody, I will turn my back on the film and walk away if I don’t like it.

And sometimes even if I do like it. If I need to rotate the laundry, I’ll just go do it. And no, you don’t need to pause the movie for me. Really. Please. Don’t.

I will get up in the middle of a scene because I’ve decided I need to go to bed.

Yet here we are. Married ten years now, and still no signs of impending divorce.

Although we do have that big remodeling project coming soon, and I’m already having to become quite stern about things like taking sledgehammers to cabinetry before the architect has even come to take his final measurements, let alone given us, you know, blueprints of any sort…