A friend of mine asked me not long ago, “What are you happy about?’ I don’t now why such a simple question stumped me for a minute. I just stared at him smiling. I wish I could say, “Oh that’s just me, happy all the time.” But lying always catches up with you, so why bother. On the other hand, Jim Brawner is happy all the time. OK, 95% of the time. To be honest it can be somewhat irritating living with someone like that.

I am the first to admit I hate conflict, but you know how sometimes it just feels good to vent and rant and rave? When I come to that point Jim generally laughs and then I end up laughing too. It always works. However one time it didn’t.

During that “blissful” first year, a couple usually dances around trying to figure out how this marriage thing works. It’s a wonder we made it through ours. But Jim kept me laughing. When we were setting up house he unboxed a Miller Light cube calendar with a peel off stick on back. His uncle owned a pool hall and one of the sales reps had so graciously given him an extra so he gave it to Jim. How handy to be able to flip the cubes around and always know the date!

I walked out of the room and when I came back he had stuck the calendar on the kitchen wall. At first I thought it was a joke and reached up to move it, but it wouldn’t budge. Seriously? That was probably my first ranting and raving episode in our marriage and it wasn’t pretty. I even accused him of brain cell loss from being hit so many times playing football.

So in attempt to fix the situation, he pulled the source of conflict off the wall taking a hunk of sheetrock with it. We both stared blankly at each other, then he walked out the front door.

Hours later life was back to normal. We left the wall torn up until we moved three years later to remember, it’s not worth it. Most of what we waste time having fits about isn’t. Secretly I still think an ugly calendar stuck on my kitchen wall was fit worthy.