Ha>  Most likely why I follow your posts, good insight and karma!
 Ha>  A big man is the one that can state I was wrong to people they
 Ha>  know or in public!

  This is going to be a long reply, but after reading, you'll see why.

  My late wife put me in my place many times. <G> I grew up with a 
brother...I didn't know it took forever and a day for women to get 
ready, and they had to sit on the toilet for everything. She had one 
cardinal rule in our marriage:

  "LEAVE THE TOILET SEAT DOWN".

  Nothing more needed to be said. If I heard this long "spit" like
an angry cat, I knew I was guilty.  And, no to the guys...you 
can't "learn to hover". 

  She also had a Bachelor's and a Masters Degree in Psychology.
And, I should've known better than to mess with her. One night,
being a smart-@$$, I said "My head is so far up my butt, that I
can see my throat!!". Grinning wryly, without missing a beat, she 
quipped "No wonder your eyes are so brown!!". <G>

  Before she passed away 3 weeks shy of our 4th wedding anniversary
nearly 16 years ago now (some days, it still seems like yesterday), 
she got me 2 T-shirts, with the following: 

FRONT: WARNING!! KLUTZ ON THE LOOSE!!

BACK: DANGER!! ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN!!

  Her response?? "That's him". Nice to have the spouse so supportive
in all things. <G>

  Her vision wasn't the greatest, so driving was out of the question
for her (it is for me now, but mine is due to blurred vision from
dry corneas). Yet, on her computer (back when you could do 640x480
resolution!), she would find errors in items on the BBS (that's how
I met her) that I'd never see. 

  It is so true that when you prepare a document, you will make errors 
that you never see. Yet, when someone else looks at it, they can spot 
it right off!! I got fat on humble pie and salted crow during our
marriage...and I was more wrong than right.

  Also, in the BBS doorgames, she and I competed fiercely...but like so
many other people for sports in real life...she was a great winner...
but she was a sore loser. <G> 

  When she saw I was ahead of her in the doorgames, she'd ask "Don't
You Want Any Tonight??"; or say "That Means None For You Tonight".
When I truthfully replied "It's the luck of the draw", she would spit
at me like the mad kitty when I left the toilet seat up!! Yet some
days, I do great in certain doorgames, and other days, it's like I 
get a losing hand every time.

  We knew each other as "friends" for 17 1/2 years, never thinking of
marriage, let alone to each other. 

  Comparing my late wife to the first woman I was engaged to (thankfully,
I broke off that engagement before we got married), it was like night and
day, difference wise.

1) The first woman always wanted me to take her to the most expensive
restaurant to eat. My late wife didn't care if we ate at McDonald's or 
The Olive Garden...to her, "food was food".

2) The first woman always expected me to pick up the restaurant meal
tab. My late wife would ask "Who's paying for this??". I would usually
give her "a big toothy grin" <G>, and she'd lament "I was afraid of
that". But, when there were times I'd ask if she would pick up the tab,
or if we could "go Dutch", she never complained about it.

3) The first woman wanted me to forsake all my hobbies outside of work,
and spend every waking moment with her. My late wife wanted to be part
of my hobbies, and said "I won't make you give up anything that makes
you happy". With the BBS, we were "Married With Modem Sysops".

4) The first woman wanted kids. My late wife didn't, and neither did I...
in the case of myself and my late wife, it was due to medical issues for
both of us.

  Nowadays, too many folks have "excess baggage", and I don't want or
need all that drama in my life. The hobbies that I do...the BBS, amateur
radio, square dancing (mostly behind the scenes), and writing Gospel
Poetry, give me some relief from all the stress at this stage of my life.
I know I have more days behind me than ahead of me, but I want to make
the most of what I have left.

  My late wife and I met on a computer BBS that was run by the computer
science department of the local college. While the college is still
there, the BBS is long gone. The first night I went over to her house
to assist with a computer issue, she had a swivel chair, sitting on a
threadbare rug on a hardwood floor in front of the computer. She warned
me "Do Not Lean Back In The Chair". As a "Type A Male", did I listen??
Of course not!! (Let this be a lesson to the males!! <G>.

  The chair tipped over backwards, cutting a huge gash in my lower back,
right above my waist and butt. She said, "OK, take off your shirt", and
promptly broke out the First Aid Kit, swabbing, cleaning, and bandaging
the wound. A few days later, I went to a clinic, for lower back pain
from the fall...and was told "Whoever cleaned this wound wiped out any
chance of infection". That stuck with me for several years.

  She had a love for dachshunds, but the one she had the night of the
computer incident, the female dog (truly a b!+ch <G> apparently didn't
want me there, and pooped on my shoes. Two days before I proposed to
her, she had a male, who just loved me. He would roll over on his back,
and ask for "belly rubs"...but he growled at her when she tried to do
likewise to him. That was because she would put him on his back when
he misbehaved, in what's known as "the wolfpack correction method". That
made her so mad. <G>

  Anyway, I stopped by her place, and the weiner widget was barking,
crying, and wagging his tail so, at the sight of me. <G> She asked if
I wanted to take the dachshund for a walk, and I said "Sure". 

  He had one of those "retractable leashes"...which I originally thought 
were great...but they can be dangerous. The "great part" is that it lets
the dog go into the poop filled grass, and you can stay on the pavement.
The "worst part" was to come.

  I was holding the leash in front of my groin...that was my first (and
almost fatal) mistake. Somehow, the leash came off the collar retracted 
at full speed, and popped me "in the jewels", and I fell to the sidewalk. 
She didn't see that occur, but I was in extreme pain by now, nearly in 
tears. Then, when she came out to find out why I hadn't come in, she was 
horrified...asking what happened...and I said "I got bit by a leash!!".

  She helped me inside (I could barely walk), and I thought I was in
mortal danger, as males can bleed to death from an injury in that area.
So, I embarrassingly asked her to "take a look". I thought she was going
to drop me like a hot rock for "exposing myself", and I asked her "Do you 
think any less of me??". She said "I give you credit for your common sense. 
I would've called the paramedics if I had seen blood". I knew, RIGHT THEN, 
this girl was the one I was going to marry...because as she took care of 
me when the chair and leash bit me before I proposed, I knew she'd take
care of me afterwards.

  We talked with both of our pastors with "marriage counseling" sessions, 
and both felt that "both of us had good heads on our shoulders". On the 
day we announced our engagement at her church, I had gone to my church 
first, then went down to hers. Now, her pastor and his wife (who also had 
a dachshund) knew about the engagement, but no one else at her church did;
and we asked them "don't let the cat out of the bag". Their church also had
a potluck after the church service every other Sunday (they didn't have a 
Sunday School, per se). Well, as it turned out, on the day of our engagement 
announcement, and of the wedding, there was a potluck. I guess that gives 
credence to "the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach". <G>

  Anyway, after church, as is usually the case, the parishoners/members
of the congregation wanted to talk, yack, converse, etc. When I first
walked into her church that day, the pastor's wife walked up to me, and
gave me a big hug and kiss. I'm sure those who saw that, starting wagging
their tongues. Then, I sat next to the woman, who was now my fiance', and 
gave her a hug and a kiss...which likely resulting in more tongue wagging;
there was likely an undercurrent of gossip. <G>

  Well, after the benediction, the pastor tried to get the folks to quiet 
down, saying "Can I get everyone's attention, please?? I have an important 
announcement to make!!". Well, it took a few minutes to quiet the folks 
down, and then he announced "We'd like announce the engagement of Janice 
Elaine Harvey to Daryl J.D. Stout!!". 

  You could've heard a pin drop, and the look on folks faces was just
priceless (can you say WTH??!!)...before they let out screams of joy!! 

  When she and I went to get the wedding invitations, the sample had the
name of the first woman I was engaged to years before...and my name. I
lamented "I think I'm going to puke!!". My fiance' roared with laughter.
Another day, I was at her place, and went to logon to the BBS, which was 
still at my parents home. I normally logged on with a macro with the 
terminal program (the BBS was just dial-up back then), and when I pressed 
the macro key to logon and nothing happened, it hit me. 

  "You're not at the host console. You don't know your password. You can't 
logon to your own BBS"!! <blush!>.

  When we went down to the courthouse to get our marriage license, the
clerk made an error with her birth year...typing 1658 instead of 1958.
In looking at the document for errors (as noted elsewhere in this message),
I spotted it right off. I said "She sure looks good for 343 years of age",
and she quipped "Well, I do sell Avon!!". <BG> It brought the house down
in laughter...so much so, that law enforcement officers from the police
departments of Little Rock, North Little Rock, Pulaski County Sheriff,
and the Arkansas State Police, came in to see what all the commotion was.
The clerk, as red as a tomato by now...lamented "You don't want to know!!".
That brought another round of raucous laughter. <G>

  The day before the wedding, we went to a beauty shop to "get her hair
relaxed" (the women will know what that means). The conversation got
around to my singing tenor voice, and she said "If he sings, he'll make
you cry". They didn't believe her...so after a chorus from the song I was
going to do at the wedding, they were bawling. My workplace had given us
a surprise bridal shower on the Friday before, with a $400 money tree...
which paid for the honeymoon at DeGray Lake State Park, in southwestern
Arkansas, north of Arkadelphia (about 90 minutes southwest of Little Rock).
As a side note, Lake DeGray is one of the best fishing spots in the state.

  The night before the wedding, I stayed up all night, preparing the items
of "soap" for "blowing bubbles" (we didn't like the idea of rice being 
thrown), while I let her sleep. Well, getting married should "scare the
crap out of a man", especially one who has never been married before...
and it did me, literally, with IBS.  So, after I "took care of business", 
I drove us down to her church, and we arrived just in time for the potluck. 
As we walked in, they said "Ah! The Bride And Groom!!", to which I replied
"Well, we're not married yet!!". <G>

  Then, after the meal, the pastor said "Well, I guess I better go put my 
marrying clothes on", as my fiance' headed back to change to her bridal 
outfit. Then, the pastor said to me "Let's just go over here in the corner,
and quietly die!!". Thank you for the confidence boost, pastor. 

  Her parents and her grandmother (all dead and gone now) drove up from
Florida. Her Dad asked me where their daughter was, and I said "she's in
the back getting dressed"...and her Dad said "I thought she had coppered
out!!". <G> When I told her that afterwards, she said "I would've been
dead meat if I had done that!!". My parents (both dead and gone now) were
originally against us getting married...but when they saw how happy we
were together, and that I was handling it, they came around. Yet, to avoid
conflict, I didn't invite them to the wedding.

  I was so nervous at the wedding, that I had put her wedding ring and
her engagement ring, along with my wedding ring, all on her finger. We
had obtained the package at a store's going out of business sale for
only $25!! I was about to blurt out "Where The Hell Is The Other One??!!".

  The Good Lord is so wise, and the preacher calmly said "You're not
supposed to put all the rings on her finger!!". Can you say "OOPS!!"??

  When we were pronouced man and wife, I sang "The Vows Go Unbroken" by
Kenny Rogers, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Her Dad asked if
he could have "one last kiss"...and I told him "she may be my wife, but
first and foremost, she's your daughter".

  I set up a memorial page for her at www.wx4qz.net/jan.htm -- my favorite
picture of her was where she looked like the late black Gospel singer
Mahalia Jackson...she said "I hate that picture...I look like a bush with
legs". <G> 

  The BBS is continued in her memory...we had promised each other it would
continue if the other one went first. The last words we said to each other
were "I love you", before a heart attack claimed her life at only 48 years
of age. I didn't get married until I was 43, but never dreamed I'd be a
widower at 47.

Daryl

... "Do you, Sysop, take this BBS, to be your wedded spouse?"
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