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Poppy and I have been married for over 33 years and we dated a year, on and off,(that's another story) before we married. We have a relationship based on respect and communication and that’s how it’s always been. When we were dating, he lived in Memphis and I lived in Northeast Arkansas. He would drive the almost 2 hours after work to see me and on his days off he would be there. Otherwise, we talked on the phone for hours and hours…..well, we would be connected by phone for hours. Most nights, one or both of us would fall asleep while on the phone. Now, back then, there was no internet, no cells phones, and no long distant plans other than charge, charge, charge. There were many mornings I would wake up with the phone off the hook, charges still racking up, and just hang it up. Both our bills were outrageous! I think that was one reason we finally decided to get married….it was cheaper. Anyway, I will never for get the night we got married.
All our families were there and it was very nice. Now, we got married in a church that didn’t believe in divorce and I wads divorced. So we had to find our own preacher to perform the wedding. The preacher we found was a friend of the family who tended to like his drink and we believe he had taken a few sips to calm his nerves before the wedding. He spent about 10 minutes telling us all about how a ring was a circle that goes around and around and around….. Anyway, the preacher asked us if there was anything we wanted the other to know before the vows. I was thinking “Should I tell Dan about the $175 phone bill I just got?” I got so tickled thinking about it that I almost lost it. As a matter of fact, Dan’s mother got onto me afterward for laughing. She didn’t think him marrying me was very funny! Well, I thought it better not to mention it just then, or while we were on our honeymoon, or the first couple of weeks we were married. I didn’t want the bloom of our new marriage to fade so fast. I really wish I’d told him before the phone call from my old phone company at 7 am one morning. I think he would have taken it far better from me than from them. (Little did I know, but he had one just as bad!)