Published: September 21, 2009 11:47 pm      

WHITE-WALKER: Yours until ...

Ladies, have you ever been out to dinner, and when you’ve been plied with just one glass of wine that you can’t even handle because you’re a wimp, you lean over, gaze into your husband’s eyes and ask, “If there’s one thing, darling, you could change about me, what would it be?”

And without hesitation, he leans over and answers, “Your last name.”

Don’t think that happened to me last week when he took me out for my birthday dinner — after we first stopped at the Town Hall so he could buy me a lifetime sportsman license, allowing me to fish, hunt and trap. That was my big, expensive present, followed by a trip to Tractor Supply Co. for the little incidentals, hip boots and a shirt that reads, ‘100 percent homegrown.’ And the shirt is green, my least favorite color after black, red, purple, gray, orange, maroon and mustard yellow.

“Homegrown.” Is this the same woman, I wondered, who just three short months ago was in Europe hobnobbing with Sophia Loren? Who was propositioned by a 95-year-old man carrying a cane? He called out to my sister and I while we were walking along the Almafi Coast in Italy. “You both come to me tonight?” he asked.

For what, we wondered? To witness his Last Rites? Of course, that old Italian man was only kidding for, even from across the street, we could detect a devilish, sly sparkle in his eyes and an impish grin.

“I was only kidding!” swore my husband at the dinner table. “Why is it you can come out with zingers, and when I try it, you end up crying and blowing your nose into MY handkerchief?”

“That’s not the issue here,” I sobbed. “That must have been some Freudian slip when you said you want me to change my last name. I thought you were happy.”

“Happier than a pig in sh-t.”

“Shh, this is an upscale restaurant, they’ll ask us to leave.”

“Maybe during boom times, but not with our sagging economy they won’t. They’re damn lucky we’re throwing around these $1 bills,” and he lifted his Martini to the waitress for a refill. “I need two to whet my appetite, you know.”

“I need something to curb my appetite,” I smiled, realizing over his liquor and my lobster bisque, how truly opposite we are. “We’re so different,” I whispered.

“Damn right we’re different. Ya don’t see me talkin’ to everyone, do ya?”

“I thought that’s what first attracted you to me, and now that’s the very thing that’s driving you nuts.”

“You’re absolutely right there, but I suppose if you try real hard, you could come up with one thing about me that you’d like to change.”

Did he really believe that I would have to agonize to think of one thing? What if I told him there were 100 things?

“Oh, I almost forget,” he whispered, “This is for you,” and he slid an envelope over to me. The card read — “Some people just make the world a more beautiful place to live.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Beats the hell out of me,” he winked.

You don’t want to know how he signed that card. OK, I’ll tell you. “Yours until this country gets a universal health care program.”

This marriage sounds pretty safe to me.

Karen White-Walker is a Wilson resident. Her column runs every Tuesday. To read past columns, visit www.homegrownharvard.blogspot.com.