This is another excerpt from Jon Carroll’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle. Sometimes Jon just nails something really important in a single sentence. Like this:
Maybe that’s what a marriage needs — both parties figuring they married up.
It’s from his column of December 17, 2004. Marriage is one of the subjects he does best. Here’s a longer excerpt:
I have been watching her covertly for 28 years now. I have been marveling at her presence in my life. I heard a good line in a bad movie: “I’m not in your class. I am so far from being in your class that, if your class were to explode, I would not hear it for three days.” That’s the way I feel; she’s out of my class, and yet here she is.
Maybe that’s what a marriage needs — both parties figuring they married up. There’s got to be a little shock and awe in any long-term relationship, lest it threaten to be routine. Of course, a lot of it is routine anyway, but not all. Just when it’s time to take out the garbage — a little shock, a little awe.