Marriage is about many things, of course, and I will not list them here, because that is boring. But one underrated aspect of marriage is the ability to make fun of each other. For what would the union of two souls be, if one half couldst not point at the other and go, “Ha ha, my beloved is incorrect about something”? 

To wit: on Halloween I was tasked with picking up candy. In our building, you can leave out candy for the trick or treating children, who then wander the hallways, ransacking the bowl you’ve left out as they pass by. (You could also just answer your doorbell, which would be more fun for all parties involved, except Hazel goes into “Time to murder!” mode when the doorbell rings and we don’t want to scare kids that much.) We did this last year, and I have only a faint memory of the night, which went like this: Leave out candy, hear children in the halls doing whatever children do, find bowl empty at the end of the night. What’s important to note is that I had no memory of how often we refilled the bowl or how many children were around. I have no memory of it! 

So I went to the drugstore in our neighborhood, where I saw that the “seasonal” aisle was completely cleaned out, of course; most people don’t wait until the day of Halloween to buy their supplies. There were a couple of displays with smaller bags of candy, not the giant variety packs you can buy, so I commenced grabbing a bunch of them. It’s also important to note that I had not had lunch yet and I was feeling a little lightheaded as well as hungry, so I wanted to get those bags and get out of there.