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FROM GOOD OLE UNCLE VICJune 2005
Hello everyone, how are you? June. The start of summer. Hope your brick bodies are ready.
Okay. The answer to last month’s quiz: Where did the distress term “mayday” come from? From the French word maidez, which means “help me”.
This month’s quiz, again for a free movie pass, everyone has heard of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy, June 6th 1944. What was the actual code name the Allies used for D-Day? You know, like Operation Desert Storm was the code name for the first Iraqi war. Email your answer in to Vicki, via e-mail. Vicki.Brick@BrickBodies.com. (Yes, she is still helping us out even though she is living in Australia!)
On June 17 Lynne and I will be married for 27 years. Yes, yes, I know, I know. I don’t look that old but it’s true, 27 years! We will be celebrating our anniversary again in Australia, just like we did on our 25th. This time we will be visiting Vicki, and Jon will be with us. We will spend time in Sydney, relax at our friends resort in Gwinganna near the Gold Coast, fly up to the Great Barrier Reef and spend some time at Port Douglas snorkeling and exploring the rain forests, visit our friends’ ranch in Kangaroo Valley, conduct some business in Canberra, spend some time at our friends’ cottage on Scotland Island and then return to the U.S. If you notice, I am pretty good at free-loading. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone in Port Douglas or we would never have to pay for a room the entire time we are there.
Getting back to our anniversary, although there are many people much better qualified to give the following advice on marriage (My parents have been married 59 years!) Lynne and I do work together, which sometimes makes the 27 years seem like 54! You will also notice that things like integrity and honesty aren’t on this list. They go without saying. So here goes, Uncle Vic’s 10 Tips To A Happy Marriage:
Tip Number 1: Become Friends First. Lynne and I dated for 3½ years before we got married. We both had been living on our own and had graduated from college (although Lynne had only graduated TWO WEEKS before the wedding!). We knew each other. We were friends.
Tip Number 2: Be friends with your spouse’s friends. When you marry someone, you don’t only marry into his/her family, you marry into his/her circle of friends as well. Don’t expect him/her to give up his/her roots and memories. Good friends are hard to come by. Become friends with your spouse’s friends.
Tip Number 3: Laugh together. Wake up laughing. Go to bed laughing. Play tricks on each other. Scare each other. Share jokes with each other. Laugh through good times and bad. Teach your kids to laugh. Remember, for most things, no matter how bad things look now, you might as well laugh at it because you will be laughing about it two months from now anyway. Yes, we even laugh about Lynne’s brain tumor.
Tip Number 4: Maintain the energy in your relationship. Energy is excitement. Do things together. Try new things together. Stay active. Go on dates. Play sports, go out, go to sporting events, work out together, ride bikes together, walk together, support the kids activities together, go out with friends together. Stay young together. The world belongs to those with the most energy.
Tip Number 5: Learn how to communicate with each other. Talk with each other, not at each other. To do this you must get to know each other. You must get to know your spouses interests. You must enlighten your spouse about yours. Grow together, not apart.
Tip Number 6: Develop a sense of team. Lynne, Vick, Jon and I all have a sense of team Brick. And just like on any team it is our job to help our teammates and to make the team better. We all have our roles on the team. And we are all committed to each other. We are a team.
Tip Number 7: Learn to forgive each other. You will fight. That is certain. And you will say and do things that you should not do. The important thing is to learn to forgive each other. You have heard that old adage ‘never go to bed angry’? Well, that is not possible! But learning to forgive is. Hopefully one of you won’t be doing all the forgiving!
Tip Number 8: Show respect for each other. This goes back to developing a sense of team. Teammates respect each other. This is especially tough when you are working together but it is critical. Lynne and I really are equal partners in everything. Well, maybe she is the president of Brick Bodies, but at least I feel like an equal, right?
Tip Number 9: Keep your commitments. Failed expectations are at the root of almost all personal problems. When you say you are going to do something, do it. Again, this goes back to teamwork. Teammates can count on each other to do their jobs, to keep their commitments.
Tip Number 10: Marry for love. But be sure it is really love. The deep, abiding kind. The kind that makes you ache when you are apart. The kind that brings a flutter to your heart every time you see your spouse, even after 27 years. The kind that supercedes all the petty bullcrap that you will experience in 27 years of marriage. Yes, marry for love, no matter what your mother-in-law might say.
Semper Fi,
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
"Faith, Hope and Love abideth. But the greatest of these is Love."
I Corinthians 13:vs13
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