My wife and I were driving home late at night Thursday from a wild party and I was questioning the fact that I’ve moved in my nicknames for her over several years from bunny rabbit to puppy dog to, now, horse. “People sometimes say you’re horsey. Does that mean that you have a long face and long bones like a horse, or that you are from a horsey background?”
My wife said, “I don’t know.”
She was trying to sleep in the passenger seat. One of the faultlines in our relationship is that I like to talk more than she does. Sometimes she appreciates the chatter, sometimes she doesn’t. We were on our honeymoon 20 years ago, driving through Wyoming, and I was talking all about the characters at the wedding the day before when I noticed that my new wife was saying nothing and I looked over and she was making her hand flap, the universal sign of a blabbermouth. Later she explained, “You know I’m like my father and his mother Viv, we’re people of few words. We don’t suffer fools.” Well that wasn’t in the prenup.
The other night I said, “I’m worried that instinctually I’ve started to make this click-clicking in my mouth now when I’m talking to you. Two clicks, like this. And you know, it’s the same noise that I make when I’m around a horse. I adore horses. And you know my name means lover of horses. That’s what Philip means in Greek, phil-hippos…”
My wife said, “Just don’t try to put a saddle on me.”
