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May 11th 2008

Him & Her:
Alive & Well in Kingston
by Nancy and Dan Sapir

HIM: I thought this might be a good time to answer a few questions that readers have expressed to the management of this newspaper A question frequently asked is if one party writes both halves of the HIM & HER dialogue. Emphatically, no! I would have to be a bigger fool than she makes me out to be if I were volleying back at myself. I have some basic ground rules with her. Being the more intelligent of the two, I always begin each column. She never knows what the general topic will be. She reads what I have to say about her and responds accordingly. Generally, I never even have a chance to read her retorts until just before the paper comes out. Another popular question is does this couple really exist? Oh, yes, we’re real and living in your backyard.

There have been some accusations that no couple could experience all the situations that have been written of throughout the months and still survive marriage. On the contrary, this has a cleansing effect for me. By letting you know how foolish she is I feel better. You have to know her to realize that it is an easy matter to find so much fault with her.; she typifies the average woman, clumsy, impetuous, concerned with trivia, uncontrollable and ding-a-ling -like in her basic approach to anything. It is sheer joy for me to expose her follies and thus alert the world to my inevitable canonization.

I must give her credit for being such a good sport. Before taking on this writing assignment only our immediate circle of friends knew what I had to put up with over the years; now I evoke the sympathy of a good deal of the south shore.

Despite the irrational defenses and innocuous attacks she wages against the undeniable sense I make each week, she really is a swell person. Despite her protestations, she needs the security and assurances that only a man of my strength could provide.

I’m glad I had an opportunity to speak with you, the reader, instead of spending another week finding fault with her.

HER: Ask yourself this, why did this constant complainer marry such a ding-a-ling? I’ll tell you why; to rob me of my youth and formerly trim figure. Now I am merely the chubby shadow of my former self having surrendered the best years of my life to him. Weight Watchers thanks him.

I have stayed with him to guide and care for him. He is helpless, color blind, and in need of intelligent companionship. If not for me, who would patiently adjust his heating pad each night? Or mow the lawn, snakes and all? Speaking of the snakes, when he finally got out to survey the front lawn and debunk my claim of large snakes being out there, guess what? Watching him from the front door, I saw him leap back with the kind of speed he only had when he was 25. “Did you see him?” I asked. “Oh yes,” he said shakily. “He’s a big one.”

Men are funny creatures. They watch football waiting for the buxom cheerleaders to appear. They read the Victoria’s Secret catalogue like it’s an historical document. They dream and pine for women they can’t have. Secretly, they don’t ever want those women because they know if they approached a Victoria’s Secret model on the street, she’d take one look at their Budweiser baseball hats and keep walking. But wives love their husbands and even wash the Budweiser caps.

Wives believe their husbands are wonderful people because they know more than the world does about them. Even when their bank accounts don’t match the size of their big mouths, wives love their husbands. Women are living proof that goodness exists in an evil world run by men.

So he can rant and rave all he wants, and so can any husband out there, because at the end of they day, they come home to where a sweet, patient, and loving woman awaits.

by Nancy and Dan Sapir