Some people want a life partner who’s the perfect adult: always on top of the lawn care, the taxes, and who to vote for in the next municipal election.
Me, personally? All I want is a lover who makes every moment fun and hilarious. That’s why my dating app bio says, “Please don’t take life too seriously!”
When I meet the woman of my dreams, she’ll be a goofball, a rascal, and a fun-loving troublemaker—in that order. I can just picture our first date. We won’t greet with some awkward, straitlaced hug. We’ll instinctively do a fist bump, leading into a fist kaboom, leading into finger birdies, leading into a pirate dance, leading into a light make-out.
We won’t care about that dumb biographical exchange that normies love: “What do you do for work? Oh, do you like teaching? Any siblings? Thoughts on Roth-IRAs? Favorite toothpaste?” Stop, because I need to kill myself.
Instead, my date will smile deviously and say, “Guess where I’m from.”
And I’ll say, “Is it… terrestrial?”
And she’ll say, “Not exactly.”
And I’ll say, “In that case… Glorp glorp glorp glorp.”
And she’ll say, “Glorp glorp. Glorp?”
And I’ll go, “Gloooooorp.”
When our server arrives, we’ll refuse to order anything but “glorp glorp.” He’ll say, “What the hell is going on right now?” and walk away cursing. And we’ll bust up laughing and know that we’re soulmates. Then we’ll tip $4.44 in pennies that, coincidentally, we both had in our pockets.
Our connection and our silliness will only grow stronger over time. Where other couples do laundry and discuss health insurance and die a little each day, we’ll do nonstop bits, invent wacky one-liners during sex, and hoop dance straight through other people’s picnics in public parks while we wear inflatable T-Rex costumes.
Our world will be our own. We won’t even use other peoples’ dull language. We’ll call babies “boom boxes,” and boring in-laws will be “umps.” Some annoying umps may try to trap us at family functions and ask dumb stuff like, “Is your apartment big enough? Is your neighborhood safe? When are you two having a baby? And why do you have pirate hooks on your hands?” But we’ll just suck on limes, wave our hooks in the air, and shout, “Yarrrr! Where’s the rum!?”
And even if we do decide to have a boom box together, we’ll never, ever become a couple of umps.
In fact, I’ll take my fun-loving woman to the best places in life, like the silly hat store. We’ll dash through the aisles while stacking hats on our noggins as fast as we can: an Abe Lincoln top hat, a medieval jester’s cap, a tricorn buccaneer’s hat, a fuzzy pinching crab hat—one on top of the other until there are so many hats on our heads that even the store owner freaks out.
“Hey, stop!” he’ll shout. “I love silly hats as much as anyone, but please, be reasonable!”
But we’ll just laugh hysterically and pile on more and more hats while we pirate dance like maniacs. We’ll dance right out the door and into the busy street for an impromptu street-dancing hat party.
A Chevy Blazer will smash into us, sending us flying through the air like rag dolls, forty-seven hats careering skyward. I’ll survive with twenty-nine fractures, and she’ll die instantly.
At the funeral, I’ll limp to my beloved coxswain’s casket and shed a single tear.
But then she’ll sit up in her casket and shout, “GLORP! GLORP! GLORP!”
And I’ll say, “Babe! Holy crap… Did you plan this entire…”
And she’ll bust up laughing in the sexiest, goofiest, most life-affirming laugh that says she doesn’t give a crap about any of that car crash, life insurance, vehicular manslaughter adult bull crap.
Her family, who thought she was dead, will shout, “Not again!” But everyone else will crack up at our totally zany and outrageous shenanigans, including the priest who will ask between belly laughs, “Who paid for this funeral, and why?”
As the years fly by, we’ll get hit by so many cars during street dances and fall off so many cruise ships during aggressive improv scenes that our bodies will be decimated. We’ll sit next to each other in rocking chairs on the porch of our country home, hand in hand, ad-libbing pirate dialogue, until one day, we actually—no joke—expire. The mailwoman will drop off yet more unpaid hospital bills and foreclosure notices, and she’ll see our decaying corpses in our rocking chairs, do a double-take, and say, “Nah, these two idiots fake their deaths like every other week.”
In time, only our skeletons will remain, motionless in our rocking chairs, two smiles on our bony faces, two pirate hats on our skulls, two souls now floating through a universe that’s a paradise of silliness for all who dare to answer the call.