Last night, for example, once we finished Modern Family or possibly M*A*S*H, I took charge of the remote and started my ritual of scrolling through what looks to be over four million channels. Unfortunately, my wife noticed that the Oprah Winfrey Network was playing When Harry Met Sally, which is as far as any relationship would get if a guy that looked like Billy Crystal tried to hit on a girl that looked like Meg Ryan. I most graciously allowed her to watch When Harry Met Sally while I continued scrolling through the channels. After what seemed like days of searching through the channel guide I noticed that my wife had fallen into a conscious dream state (the weaker gender!) brought on by too much Rob Reiner. Every so often she would unknowingly make comments in a distant voice like "Billy Crystal is gross," and "Her outfit is so cute," and "I like this version of Meg Ryan's face better than the new one." Her blank glassy-eyed stare told me that I'd better find something else to watch and fast or she would drift from the Rob Reiner state into the deeper and seemingly more-real Nora Ephron state until finally free falling into Penny Marshall limbo. Just as I was losing all hope of ever seeing a gunfight or a fart joke in a movie again, along comes HBO Lithuania showing a movie that would not only kick my wife out of her chick-flick dream state, but appealed to my heightened sense of refined taste and intellectual development. Of course I am referring to Balls Out: Gary the Tennis Coach which is rated R for being so mynd-numminglee stoopid that I can no longer spell mind-numbingly stupid without a dictionary. Obviously I didn't get to watch Balls Out because it was nearly over by the time I found it and my wife doesn't need any kind of kick to get back to reality. She said, "No way." And that was that.
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| Seriously. What does she see in him? |
Once Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan were finished breaking up and getting back together for the millionth time, the movie ended and we went off to sleep. Well, that's not entirely true. I should have said my wife went off to sleep while I listened to her make the noises I imagine a Gitmo detainee makes while being waterboarded. For your convenience, I have broken her snoring down into three levels based on noise-type, volume, and frequency:
Level 1) Vin Diesel
Vin Diesel is an American actor and director born of Italian and African-American ancestry. I only mention that not because I believe that my wife's snoring sounds like she has Italian and African-American ancestors, but because I thought Vin Diesel was white. Anyway, Mr. Diesel has starred in many films including all fourteen of the Fast and Furious movies as well as a space movie and probably some other films as well. While I'm not a Vin Diesel connoisseur, I can tell you that I've seen enough of his films to know that my wife sounds exactly like him while she's in Level 1 snore mode. As far as I can tell from his films, Diesel intermittently communicates with a series of one- maybe two-syllable grunts that occasionally string themselves together to make a longer low rumbling noise. In fact, the resemblance is so uncanny that I thought someone had left a Vin Diesel movie playing on the TV at four in the morning. If you're still not sure what either Vin Diesel or my wife sounds like while she's sleeping, try to imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger with a thick Brooklyn accent, but with less love children.
| Big muscles mean eating protein. Babies are protein. |
Level 2) Wildebeest
Just to be clear here: I'm not saying that my wife is a wildebeest, only that she sounds like one when she passes through Level 1 Vin Diesel snore stage into Level 2 wildebeest snore stage (that should keep me out of trouble, don't you think?). For those of you that don't know what a wildebeest sounds like, I can't help you because I've never heard one. But let me assure you that my wife's snoring (Level 2, mind you) sounds like what I believe a wildebeest would sound like if I had ever heard one. I will post a picture of a wildebeest below this paragraph so you can see one and thus imagine what one might sound like. Needless to say, hearing the call of a wildebeest at three in the morning is alarming. Our dogs cry and whimper because they somehow believe that they have been magically transported to the Serengeti Plains of Africa, which is a lot for their simple minds to process.
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| Imagine it snoring. |
Level 3) Chewbacca
Many of you know Chewbacca from the Star Wars films, novels, comic books, video games, and my bedspread and curtains from when I was twelve. Many of you don't know that Chewbacca and my wife have many wonderful things in common: they are both gentle, hairy, non-English speaking co-pilots of a spaceship; they both hail from the planet Kashyyyk; they are both masters of the bowcaster; they both have family members named Mallatobuck, Attichitcuk, and Lumpawarrump; and finally, they have both received a Lifetime Achievement Award from MTV. But the thing that my wife and Chewbacca have most in common is their vocal stylings -- especially when she snores. Once the Vin Diesel and wildebeest stages pass, my wife makes the same noise that Chewbacca did when he saw Darth Vader in Cloud City. And on nights when I don't wake her up (I'm too afraid), she wails like Chewbacca did when Han was frozen in carbonite.
Most of the time I really don't care what she watches, or that I need to reinforce the walls and ceiling of our bedroom with sound-absorbing materials, because we've been together so long I can't remember a time without her. That's just the stuff -- maybe even the good stuff -- that happens in a long-term relationship (read that as marriage). This entire post was really just a way of letting her know that I love her, and that this should count as that love letter you've always wanted. That's something I have in common with Han Solo: we're both hopeless romantics.
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| Good with a bowcaster (pictured). Terrible for sleeping. Still a cute couple. |
I am an Insomniac. I don't even sleep let alone snore. I love you even though you said I was hairy.
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