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Almost 12 years ago I gave a wedding speech to end all wedding speeches. It was funny; it had some emotion. But mainly it was funny. And all at the expense of the groom of the day—my husband. He joked afterwards that it was meant to be a wedding speech, not a roasting. I responded that it was only because he had provided me with so much material.
Lately, I've been thinking about that wedding speech quite a bit. In it I jokingly (but lovingly) went through a list of traits I always thought the man of my dreams would have and how the man of my reality stacked up. (Spoiler alert: the 'man of my dreams' would never have worked out.)
You see, my husband has always been the provider of good material for stories. He's a funny, friendly guy. And he often ends up in random situations that I would never find myself in.
Like the time he booked us tickets to a live comedy show performed entirely in Greek—we don't speak Greek. The multiple times we had issues at the airport—including when he tried to board a flight (having got all the way through security) for a flight that didn't leave until exactly 12 hours later. The numerous times I've had to pick him up from a train station because he got on the wrong line. The many occasions he got lost. Or the one time he left our four-month-old baby alone in the house because he'd forgotten we had more than one child—until the first child asked where the second was.
If something random is going to happen, it's going to happen to my husband. He's often late. He has a very high tolerance for risk. He still struggles to remember the birthdays of our 12a nd 10-year-olds. He is forever getting things out and not putting them away. And he starts DIY projects at the most inopportune times—like the day we're flying to visit relatives.