The Story of Two People Who Stopped Being Cool

When I met my husband Joseph, we were 18. He was the drummer and I was the singer in a band that never quite got off the ground because we kept changing guitarists. We were friends for years, and to make a long and complicated story short, we eventually got married in New Orleans, and today is the sixth (?) anniversary of that event.

When we were 18, we played P.J. Harvey songs. We drove back and forth between Tahlequah and Muskogee talking about Jack Kerouac and Dylan Thomas. We went to see The Chainsaw Kittens at Rome in Norman. He wore oxblood Doc Martens. I wore Slayer shirts. We talked about getting out of Oklahoma the minute we were able, moving to New York, having the kind of life that involved Jewish deli counters and loft apartments and late night poetry readings in dark converted churches.

Well, here we are, 34, in New York...although quite north of where we expected to be. And tonight we celebrated our anniversary in the most uncool way possible: We spent the day looking at antique snowshoes and dog Halloween costumes in Watertown. I bought a snowmobile for my Fisher Price Little People community. He bought an obscure science fiction book called The Forever War.

Then we had dinner at the Sackets Harbor American Legion. Here's the difference between Oklahoma and New York: In Oklahoma, we have hog frys. In New York, they have pig roasts. This one was in support of the Sackets Harbor Patriots Booster Club. (They raise money for the local high school sports team.) But I guess we've been heading this uncool way since last year, when we ate Frito chili pies for our anniversary at my cousin Colton's high school football game in Washington, OK.

After dinner, we joined the rest of the people dressed as witches (Did I mention that I attended the pig roast dressed as a witch?) in parading down main street. Sackets Harbor has a shopping event called Witches Night Out in which people can dress like witches and warlocks (the Disney kind; not the actualy kind) and get special discounts at the stores and restaurants. I bought a book about fairies in Celtic religion at The Fairy Store and won a bar of pumpkin pie scented soap at the soap store for eating a jellybean whose flavor was called "Baby Wipes." (It was SO GROSS!!)

It's not so late, and they will now be dancing at the pig roast (they have a band), but Joseph doesn't like being out of the house for long, and Tula misses us. (She spent the day at dog day care playing with the other small dogs.) So, here we are, married, with a dog and a house, not in New York City watching performance art.

I'd take the performance art, but this is good too. He's given me a better life than I could have ever imagined for myself. I'm lucky every day to be his family and have him as mine.