Sixteen years ago, I stood in my living room thinking about the movie Hackers. I was supposed to be paying attention to the pastor but he had quoted Corinthians which is also in the movie.

11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

When I finally realized I was supposed to be paying attention, I managed to choke out a “I-I do.”

I've never been really good at that type of thing. I wasn't too graceful with the proposal either. It was drawn out over a year of me telling her “I'm going to ask you to marry you, I'm just too scared to ask.” It also ended with “I think I just asked you to marry me. Did I?”

When it comes to people, there aren't a lot who understand me. I have certain quirks and obsessions that would drive most people bonkers. I'm picky about certain things and (as a coworker once said) I'm rather “self-described.” I like to think it means I know what works for me, but it also means that I get wound up when my keys aren't in the right place or I spent two hours trying to find something that is right on top. I'm broken and functional.

And somehow she's remained with me all this time. Through the fights and the laughter. We didn't have children until eleven years after we got married (my parents may have thought we were never going to get around to it) and they were wonderful years. The years with EDM and BAM in our lives were just as amazing, just different. Different fights, save love.

We always talk about our fifty-year marriage. Fifty years and then we'll decide if we want to stay married. It was a compromise between me wanting to renew every decade (and to give her a chance to walk away if I got too annoying) and her desire for “you are with me until the day we both die”.

For sixteen years, we've said “forty nine to go. Forty eight. Forty seven” and now “thirty four.” Hard to believe that I've been with someone for sixteen years (and over twenty that we've been “more than friends”).

I'm pretty happy and lucky.

Sixteen years down.

Thirty four to go.