Perhaps, This Is Why We Don't Make New Friends Easily

There are things about the Aggie and myself that make us well suited to be each other's spouse. This includes a love of history and dogs, enjoying a nice afternoon watching baseball and, of course, writing/sharing stories about each other and our pets on the Internet. Not to mention that we genuinely are friends and enjoy each other's company. (Well, there are many, many more reasons we are compatible, but this is a PG-13 rated blog and if I were to go there it might shoot us on into the NC-17 category. So we'll stop short of that.)

There are ways we are a lot alike. We are both hotheaded and kind of dramatic. Both of us are very sentimental and get our feelings hurt easily. We both like a good fart joke and I guarantee you we will both laugh uncontrollably at someone else's expense, even if that person is mentally handicapped, or a child or even – and know this might buy us a one-way ticket to Hell – the elderly. If someone does something funny like say accidentally getting their wheel chair stuck to the front of an 18-wheeler and ends up being pushed down the interstate at 70 miles-per-hour, we'll probably laugh ourselves into an asthma attack over it. And not feel bad about one bit. Its just how we roll.

Oh and we're fiercely competitive. Lets not skip over that one.

Which brings me to our current dilemma. The Aggie and I have been invited to a night of wholesome family fun playing board games with Madge's family and our childhood friend Catfish and her husband. When we accepted this invitation, I don't think either of us really thought through the ramifications of playing board games with our friends. I mean we can be kind of… what's the word… intense. Yes, lets go with "intense." That sounds better than us being "fuckers." Because that’s just about the only other descriptor that's coming to mind.

I mentioned this fact to Madge last night on the phone, who cackled at the thought of this, then became very, very serious when she said: "Oh and I invited a girl that's over the science labs to come too with her husband."

"So you know us? Right? We've met before. Why on Earth would you do that?" I asked, only half joking.

"Ah, it'll be fine. You'll like 'em a lot."

"I don't doubt that… but… you know… Madge, we'll run them off. Forever," I said. "Like this woman may start avoiding your calls, even when it's JUST work-related."

Madge may have to change her name, go underground and resurface in a couple of years with blond highlights and a Midwestern accent just so the American educational system will let her work with children again. Unfortunately for Madge, she has known me literally my entire life, so she's kind of impervious to my behavior.

And what could we do that would be so awful? Oh, I don't know like maybe openly, blatantly cheating our way through a heated game of Cranium. Then, when we – shocker! – actually win, we jump up to publicly claim our victory and do so by pointing our fingers in their faces and screaming: "Suck it, Losers!"

It's happened before. It will happen again. Probably tomorrow night.