Marriage Material?
For most of us, there are few decisions bigger in life than selecting who we marry. I remember reading once that the best way to know if you can live with the person you are considering marrying is to drive across the country with them and spend at least 2-3 days in the car alone. The article went on to say that if you are still talking and having a good time with your tripmate at the end, there is probably a good chance you can hang in for the long haul. If, however, you run out of things to talk about or can’t wait to get out of the car by the end of the trip, you might want to re-think your selection.
I read this article long after I knew that I was going to marry Shelley, but I used this test without even knowing it. About a month after I met her, I had to drive home from Tulsa, OK to New York for a family reunion. On a whim, I asked her if she wanted to go with me. Shockingly, she said yes. Even more shockingly, her parents said yes. Just to put this in perspective, her parents actually encouraged her to set out on the road for a 24-hour drive with a guy she had known only a month, going to a family that they did not know. She was 18 years old. At the time I remember thinking “That’s pretty cool.” Having a daughter of my own, I now think they were totally crazy. Crazier still, they suggested we take her car. Shelley at the time had a super nice Honda CRX-Si that was a lot of fun to drive ( much more so than my 1972 Ford Maverick ), so it was jackpot city for me. A hot girl, a hot car, and nothing but the open road in front of us.
We made our way across the country, blasting the stereo and having generally a great time. She listened to some really weird music, and I had to indoctrinate her with some of my glam metal. By the time we got to my house the next morning ( after driving straight through ), my entire extended family had arrived. The Barstows are a tough crowd, but they took to Shelley like a duck to water. She just settled right in and seemed to have a blast.
We went from NY to Virginia for some reason that now escapes me, and then headed back from Virginia to Oklahoma. By this time we were quite tired, so we stopped to sleep in the car for a few hours. It was one of those boiling southern nights, so I decided that opening the moon roof was a solid idea. We woke up a few hours later to a car full of mosquitos and some unhappy moments. I felt like a toad. We fired up the CRX and headed for Tulsa. We got back to Tulsa and were still blasting the stereo and having a grand time.
At the time I was 20 years old and had no thoughts of marrying anyone, but I knew that I had met someone pretty special. We got married five years later after some really interesting intervening times. Shelley and I just celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary a few months back. We still have a blast on road trips, and every time we go on one I think back to that first summer I met her.
