Is the 'I Love You' Worth It?

Something Blue

“LISEA! OH MY GOD HELP ME!!!”
I sit straight up in bed at the sound of my name being screamed.
“HEEELLLLPPP!”
What the hell has Tre gotten himself into now? I glance at the alarm clock as I haul it out of bed and read 3:00. In the morning. Following the sounds of his screams, I find him in the hallway.
“I’m stuck!” he yelps, pointing to his underwear caught in the door latch to the hallway closet.
“How…”I decide I don’t want to know and try to pull his shorts out of the doorjam.
“I was trying to get toilet paper so you wouldn’t be mad and the cat scared me and I closed the door and they got stuck.” He stares at me wide eyed.
“Okay, just pull,” I say. I’m not even going to try and comprehend what he just said.
“I tired, like, a million times, but they’re stuck!” he whimpers.
“Alright. You pull and I’ll turn the knob,” I say, placing one hand against his shoulder to brace myself. “Ready? Go.”
We both go at our respective tasks… and nothing. How the hell?
“Can you just step out of them?” I say shrugging and rubbing my sore wrist.
“Tried that too,” he twists his mouth up.
I sigh. “I’m going to pull and you pull with me and we’ll just rip it out of the door, okay?”
“Yuh-huh,” he nods eagerly. He’s such a five year old.
“One…” I say grabbing hold of his waist and shooting him a conformation glance.
“Two… Three! Go!”
We both yank and yank until his boxers rip off his body. We fly back against the wall, Tre landing on top of me, crotch to face, the racket waking Ramona. She lets out a wail, as Tre rights himself, grinning.
“Success!” he grins proudly. I look over to the door, just as the doorknob clatters to the ground, revealing a pronounced hole in the door.

So this is what it’s like to be married.

Our wedding was two days ago, and really, nothing has changed. I ended up getting a dress at the Salvation Army, which was fine- better than any skank thing I would have found at an actual dress shop. It pretty much went off without a hitch, but then again, my parents were there, so it’s pretty much impossible for things to go perfectly. All in all, though, it went well- no one was high out of their mind, my mother didn’t skink Tre alive, Billie Joe didn’t eat so much cake he puked all over Tre’s grandmother, not causing her to knock over an ice sculpture, onto which Mike didn’t fall and cut his head open. Oh yeah, I prepared for the worst. But, I don’t know… nothing happened. We didn’t have a honeymoon, obviously. How do you have a honeymoon with a three month old? Oddly enough, I thought being a “newlywed”would feel a certain way- but apparently, it feels like any other day: you wake up at three AM and wind up with Tre’s balls shoved in your face. You know, like any other typical day.

“I think I’ve got elastic burn,” Tre says yanking his fresh, unripped boxers down to show me the yellowing bruise along his hipline at breakfast the next morning.
“Well, we did yank you pretty hard,” I say, shifting Ramona in my arms so she can take her bottle sitting up.
“That’s what she said,” he says, scooping yogurt onto his poptart and shoving it into his mouth.
“And you’re how old?” I say cocking my head towards him. Clearly, he thinks I’m joking, as he giggles hysterically.
“You know what’s crazy? Like, this is a blueberry poptart, and this is blueberry[i/] yogurt, but I’m totally not sick of blueberries. I could seriously eat blueberries all day.”
What?
“What?”
“Blueberries,” he says holding out the poptart to Ramona and grinning at me.

So this is what it’s like to be married.