13 Years of Wedded Ignorant Bliss

After the girls were in bed I was indulging in a little me time and was watching Becoming Jane. Tim woke up for work when I was in the middle of it and I didn't want to turn it off. After a few minutes he asked me "What is this?" to which I replied with the name of the movie and briefly described it as a portrayal of the life of Jane Austen. He then asked me in all seriousness "Who are Jane and Austen?". I could not help but burst into fits of raucous laughter. Not at his ignorance of English Literature but at the fact that he has been married to ME for 13 years and during several of those years the Complete Works of Jane Austen sat on my bedside table (seems to have been buried in the many years of moving boxes but certainly still a favorite). I wrote my first novel at the age of ten (okay, okay, it was only one chapter, but still), I constantly had my nose in a book until the age of 14 when boys became somewhat more important, and I got my (however meager) degree in Arts and Humanities after we were married. Does this man know me AT ALL? Did he really just ask me who Jane and Austen are? Followed by (because I was still laughing and he was left to his own attempts at guessing) "are they royalty or something?". Even after I divulged that Jane Austen was one person, he still looked perplexed. I explained that as a writer her influence was surpassed only by Shakespeare himself, to which he replied, Oh. I was seriously starting to question the validity of our marriage, but the conversation turned to work and he was explaining why he needed to borrow my tripod, and I had to ask "what's a MILK cam?" to which he burst into laughter. Now, whatever this milcam thing is cannot possibly compare in relevance to Jane Austen, but it did help me remember that whenever he tries to make me watch Family Guy or some sci-fi horror flick I get out of it by threatening him with Anne of Green Gables. And that some of the very few movies we watched in the theatre this year were The Other Boleyn Girl (amazing!), Juno (LOVED IT!), The Shooter (eh, Tim loved it), and American Gangster (um, loved Denzel....). So I guess there just has to be that give and take philosophy to marriage, and every once in a while you find something that you have in common or can tolerate surprisingly well. I can't believe I actually know lines to Super Troopers and Tim can recite half of French Kiss! And we will both stop what we're doing to watch Oh Brother Where art Thou. Despite our opposing interests I'm sure that our kids will think we are both weird...