Over the past couple of years I have attended five or six events at Conseco Fieldhouse, but last Saturday was the first time that any of those happenings were sport related. Hubby and I were privileged to attend a marriage conference called Rekindling the Romance.
Oh! You thought I meant a sports event, like with a ball and sweaty men wearing uniforms? I consider marriage to be a sport of sorts. Certainly we do plenty of sporting, in the old-fashioned sense of the word.
According to Webster the eighth definition of the word sport is: amorous trifling or play. The use of the word in that sense is obsolete in this day and age, but I think we should bring it back. There are several variations of the word sport that are rarely heard anymore, and it’s time for those of us who couldn’t care less about athletics to reclaim those words.
Hubby is definitely a sporter. When he and I are sporting, he gives me high marks for sportsmanship. Sometimes I sport lingerie and cast him a sportive glance and then he feels even more sportful. If we sport early in the evening we give ourselves a sporting chance of not falling asleep. When we make sport of silly situations, we have a good laugh together and that adds to our sportfulness.
Even as I type this, grammar check is highlighting sporter, sportful and sportfulness as errors. But they are in the dictionary and are being correctly used. This tells me some of the fun has gone out of our language. The words we use today to talk about romance are greatly lacking and often inappropriate. It’s time to put clean fun back into our language and our marriages.
Our 13th anniversary fell two days after the romance conference. (Which I highly recommend, by the way.) I went to the Hallmark shop to buy cards for hubby. I always buy two; a sentimental one and a humorous one. I love reading each and every card and thoughtfully making my selections. All the beautiful verses and poems often leave me feeling quite emotional.
After about an hour I chose my cards and headed to the cash register with tears streaming down my face. I explained to the cashier that it was my 13th wedding anniversary. She nodded pleasantly and began ringing up my purchases. Upon totaling the cards she looked at me with a bit of a shocked expression and said, “This might not be a good year for you. Not only is it your13th anniversary, the total of your cards is $6.66!”
Now, having been a Christian for the better part of my life, I knew better than to take the superstition seriously, but I had a momentary lapse in judgment. In an effort to save my marriage from destruction, I quickly looked about, trying to find some cheap item I could add to my purchase in order to bring the total to anything besides $6.66.
When it appeared I would have to spend no less than another $3.00, my brain and my convictions finally kicked in. I held my head high as I wrote out the check for $6.66, ignoring the expression of concern upon the clerk’s face and defying society’s preoccupation with superstitious nonsense.
I then made my way to the fabulous Donaldson’s chocolates. (Well-placed plug deserving of a free pound of milk chocolate) Anyway, I stopped by Donaldson’s and picked up a box of candy for my beloved and a couple of caramels for myself.
As I drove home, sucking the chocolate off my caramel, it occurred to me that hubby might think that our day at the marriage seminar constituted an anniversary celebration. It was entirely possible that he would forget to bring me anything. The only consolation for my worried mind was the thought of keeping the box of chocolates all to myself, should he come home empty handed.
But of course my hubby is an absolute darling and he arrived home that evening with a dozen red roses, a gaily wrapped bottle of perfume, a giant decorated bakery cake and an anniversary card. I guess he really was paying attention at the romance seminar. And it paid off for him. Let’s just say all those traditionally romantic gifts made for quite a sportive evening!
I think year thirteen is looking pretty bright, regardless of what the sportless, Hallmark clerk has to say about it.
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