A Frying Pan is Not a Gift
Helpful Hints for Staying Married and Raising a Somewhat Happy Family For At Least 32 Years
by
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Recreational Shopping
Occasionally your wife may ask you to go shopping with her. It is a great way to spend time with your wife. Hopefully you will be talking to each other by the time you get home. What your wife wants to do is what I call Recreational Shopping. Recreational shopping involves browsing through stores with no particular items in mind to purchase. I find it is best to think of recreational shopping as a date with your wife. With that frame of mind, you really can have a good time. You can buy some coffee and meander through a variety of shops and hopefully walk out with all the money you went in with.
If your wife is from the South, you may also discover your wife has a lot of new friends after a day of shopping. One such trip occurred when we were browsing through a gift shop in Rome, Georgia. Before we left the shop, we knew where the shop owner’s family was from, who her kids were, where they lived, and where they are now. Likewise the shop owner now knows all of our kids, where they live and where we live. All this and it cost us only $44.39! I think they pinky-pledged to stay in touch.
Without the date frame of mind, you are likely to exhibit some behaviors that will annoy your wife and bring an end to what could have been a good day. Some of the behaviors to avoid: standing by the door looking at your watch, leaning on the register waiting for her to check out, sitting in the car while she is in the shop or acting like you would rather be somewhere else. Your role as a participant in the recreational shopping date is to have fun, be engaging and provide funding if necessary. The date can also double as a gift-giving opportunity.
Silent Sunday
Sunday has always been a special day at our house. It was the one day we tried to relax. Sometimes our kids had another agenda that would be different than ours. When my older sons were in high school, they started a band… in our basement.
It is an unwritten rule in the rock world that the house that has band practice is the house where the drummer lives, which was ours. We had a drummer and a guitarist in the band. It probably would have been tolerable if it had been normal rock music, but our boys were (and still are) heavy metal enthusiasts.
A typical Sunday would include getting all the kids ready for church, going to church, going out for lunch afterwards and then changing our clothes to sit down and relax or take a nap. Then later in the afternoon we would be serenaded by the band playing Metallica and homemade death metal. If you have never heard homemade death metal, imagine yourself standing about 5 feet from a railroad track. There are two freight trains coming down the track at 60 miles per hour, one from each direction. They collide right in front of where you are standing. The sound that you would hear would be similar to what was coming out of our basement on Sunday afternoons.
It is important to support your kids in their endeavors. We always wanted to provide our kids opportunities to explore whatever interested them. However, there are times when you have to draw the line, so we invoked the Silent Sunday rule. Silent Sunday was our attempt to make at least one day of the week a time for rest and relaxation. No band practice on Sunday when there are six other days of the week for practice. Silent Sunday encompasses more than just the band. The other rules include no lawn mowing, no weed eating, no making of any other motorized noise around the house. Silent Sunday lives on in our house today; everyone knows that noisy activities must be done on Saturday. Silent Sunday rocks!
Driver’s Ed
One of the scariest propositions facing any parent is teaching your children to operate two tons of steel traveling at 70 miles per hour while they are strapped inside it. It is further complicated by fun distractions like radios, iPods, cell phones and friends. It’s never too early to start the learning process; I generally started around age 6, driving in the neighborhood. When they have reached the age where they can get a learner’s permit, the serious training begins. All of my children drove a minimum of 1,000 miles with me in the car before they could get a real driver’s license. Since it will take you about 25 hours of driving to go 1,000 miles, it is also a great way to spend time with your teenager. You may even discover that you actually like some of the music your child listens to.
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About the Book
There is a big difference between wisdom and knowledge. Knowledge is what you get from reading books, going to school (if you stay awake) and touching the stove to see if it is hot, even though it is glowing red. Wisdom is correctly answering the question from your wife “honey, do these jeans make my butt look big?” If you have not yet attained wisdom, the answer to this question is not “no honey, it ain’t the jeans; it’s that bag of Oreos you ate last night.”
Since the average marriage only lasts 8 years, I feel blessed to still be married to the same person for 32 years (and counting). Both my parents and my wife’s parents never divorced. I do recall my father in-law stating on the occasion of his 50th wedding anniversary “I have never considered divorce, murder possibly, but never divorce.” Humor runs deep and wide throughout our family. This book is written for the guys who are married, are getting married or think they want to be married, so they will not make some of the same mistakes I made when trying to learn how to be married.
About the Author
Bob Borneman resides in Cataula, Georgia with his wife of 32 years, Mary Dell, youngest son Walker, who is a senior at Harris County High School along with dogs Scarlett the attention seeking Bassett Hound, and Millie the hyperactive three legged dog. Oldest son Adam is pastor of Second Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, Alabama. Daughter Koelling resides in Atlanta working in the public relations and media industry, as well as parenting foster dogs. Son Will continues as drummer with a new band and practices in his own home in Gainesville, Georgia. We are not sure if he continues to abide by the Silent Sunday rule, we think probably not. Will is creating his own record label, and has his own recording studio.