Laura almost runs a red light and then blames me for it...

I've written a few times about Laura and I driving together. To sum up those past stories, Laura fears that I drive like a grandma, and I fear for my life when I see every car around us slowing down while our car seems to be going faster. To say that Laura is an aggressive driver is doing her a disservice. She brags that she got trained on the road warrior-like freeways of California, and that's how she's going to drive from now on.

I ask her sometimes, "What do your co-workers think of your driving?"

She's admitted that the responses have ranged from a ride in a runaway taxi (not surprising) to a ride in a race car (not surprising either).

Usually, I drive us to work when we carpool, but I talked her into driving the other day. We took her car, the Mazda 3, which Laura refers to as 'awesome' and much better than my 'no balls' having Santa Fe. She got a car that does what she wants. It takes off on a flash and gives her the ability to zip in and out of traffic. When she drives, I've taken to just reading magazines because if I was to watch what was going on the road, I'd have a heart attack. We've gotten into a few heated discussions when I've criticized her tailgating and delayed braking times after I've almost shoved my feet through the floor boards as I'm trying to will her to stop the car in time.

So the other day Laura drove us to work. Julia was with us because she was going to the summer day camp that my employer runs. I picked up Laura, with Julia in tow, at work and we switched drivers. She pulled away, turned left and headed the three blocks that leads to the interstate exit. We started talking. She was telling me something about work when I noticed that the light ahead was red. I anticipated her slowing down, but noticed that she was not slowing down. Laura kept talking.

I go, "Ummm...."

Still no stopping...

"Uh! Stop!" I yelled at the last minute.

"Oh!" Laura exclaimed and hit the brakes. We skidded to a stop just outside of the crosswalk.

"I didn't think you were going to stop," I said.

Flustered, Laura said, "Well... you were distracting me by talking!"

"Yeah, thanks a lot, Daddy!" Julia quipped from the back seat.

"How is this my fault?" I asked.

"It is because you and Julia were yapping in my ear when you should let me just drive."

We got on the interstate, and I started making a few suggestions about Laura's proximity to cars ahead of us. Laura sighed.

I should point out now that Laura is notorious for pointing out at great length how much distance I need between me and the car in front of me, how fast I should accelerate, which lane to take at any moment, which cars to pass and which way to go. If I deviate from that or don't anticipate what Laura would do, I get the inevitable questions of why I'm not doing all the things Laura would do. I often tell her that I'm going to get a bracelet that says WWLD, which means 'What Would Laura Do?"

We got further along in our trip home and I suggested that she switch lanes. Apparently, that was more than enough for Laura. She whipped around towards me and said, "If you say one more thing about my driving, just one more thing, I am going to stop this car and let you out. Then you can walk home. Don't believe me? Just try me."

I smirked and started to open my mouth.

"Feeling lucky?" Laura asked. "Go ahead and try it."

I smiled and closed my mouth.

"That's what I thought," Laura said.

I pulled out my magazine and spent the rest of the journey home trying not to look up when I saw the inevitable rush of a car's rear end coming towards me.

Later that night, we were getting ready for bed and watching a show about surviving car crashes, which of course featured lots of clips of cars crashing. One of the crashes involved a guy running from the police in a pickup truck. The chase ended when he ran a red light, and the truck he was driving collided with another car.

I said without looking at Laura, "Hmmm... I think that guy must have had his passenger and someone in the back talking to him for him to be distracted like that."

I could feel Laura's eyes bore on me as I heard her let out a long angry sigh. I closed my eyes and started giggling hard for about 10 seconds and said, "I'm sorry! I just had to say it."

"Uh huh! You're really enjoying yourself over there! You must REALLY want to sleep somewhere else tonight," she said.

An All-American... ummm...

Laura reminded me of this story the other night when we were watching the Daily Show on Comedy Central. The segment centered on Denny's revamping their late-night menu in an effort to draw in the teenagers. Suddenly, Laura started laughing her head off. After that, she reminded me of this story...

Years back, my friend, Jeff, was moving to Wahoo in an effort to be closer to Omaha so that his commute wouldn't be that long. As it turns out, he could have moved to Waverly or Gretna and been just as close to Creighton University, but that's not my problem in that's what Laura suggested to Jeff...

We loaded up the U-Haul truck with all of Jeff's stuff from his apartment. To show us his thanks, Jeff took us out to lunch at a place called the All-American Buffet. Now I don't really remember much about the lunch that day. It wasn't that bad, but Bill seems to remember it as being particularly awful.

Jeff took his car. I think I followed in a car (so I could get back to Lincoln with Bill). Bill drove the truck. Jeff and I get to Wahoo within minutes of each other. Then we waited with the others at the house for the truck to arrive. We waited. We waited some more. And we waited some more...

Finally, Bill showed up with the truck.

"Where were you?" Jeff asked Bill.

The buffet food didn't agree with him, so he had to make a pitstop on the way.

"Oh, I had to stop on the way to take an All-American shit!" Bill explained.

Hey, I've got that shirt, too...

Last Friday night, Laura and I went to The Dark Knight movie.

As we were walking in, we noticed some teenagers sitting against the window of the movie theater complex. They were probably waiting for their ride from the parents as the theater in our neighborhood doesn't allow teenagers under 16 past 10 p.m. I think they instituted it because they were tired of the damage to their theater, but that's not important to the story.

Seeing as we're going to see a pop culture event movie like the latest Batman movie, I decided to wear a quirky shirt that I had gotten at Target the other day. It's a brown shirt that looks like a skeletal ribcage, but instead of bones, the ribcage is made up of records, record player arms and cassette tapes. It's one of those shirts that supposed to look retro and hip.

As we're walking past the teenagers, a boy with the group says, "Hey man! I've got that shirt, too!"

I smile, raise my eyebrows and give him a small thumbs up as I pass him.

After we buy our tickets and walk past the counter, I say, "Wow. That makes me feel old that he has the same shirt that I have."

"Maybe he thought it was 'retro' and 'hip'?" Laura asked.

"Maybe..."

I thought about it for a minute while we were waiting for the previews to start. Yes, it looks like a young person's shirt, but I'm not that old. I'm only 37-years-old, which would have sounded ancient to me had I been as young as that kid. He sees an old dude walking buy with a belly and a graying beard. To him, I might be the lame old guy trying to act hip.

"You know," I said. "I probably have more of a right to wear that shirt than he does. I grew up with records and cassette tapes. That'd be like me wearing a black leather jacket and greasing up my hair."

I make a motion like I'm styling my hair like Danny Zucko from Grease.

She thought I was referring to the Fonz.

"Aayy!!" Laura said with her thumbs up.

Don't even think about it

The other day, a married co-worker, let's call him Pat, was getting a little weary of work. He sighed and said, "We should all just skip this afternoon and see The Dark Knight", which is the latest Batman movie.

While this was certainly possible with minimal work repercussions seeing as we have very flexible work hours (within reason), I knew Laura really wanted to see it.

"I would, but I can't. Laura wants to see it." I said.

He nodded and said, "Yeah, my wife wants to see it, too. I supposed I could go and not tell her."

"Oh! Don't do that!" I said. I have a good reason.

When you're single, you are the master of your own domain. You basically can call the shots and do whatever you want, whenever you want, to a certain degree. As a single person that's also a twin, you have that luxury of doing those things with your twin, like seeing a movie, but it's also your responsibility to ask that twin if they want to see it with you first.

Most of the time, Bill and I would see movies together, but occasionally, he'd surprise me by saying that the had an opportunity to see a movie without me (because I was working or wasn't around) and so he did. I never came out and said it, but I was always a little disappointed because now I'd have to find someone else to see a movie with me. Usually, this wasn't a problem. Sometimes, it was another friend who was bored. Sometimes, it was Bill, who agreed to see the movie again with me. And to be fair, I would also do this from time to time with a little disappointment, but no long-lasting repercussions.

Seeing a movie that you know that your friend or brother may not like is of no consequence. If they agreed to go, you assume that he was on board and willing to see it. If it was great, you rejoice that you picked the right movie. If it sucked, you could agree that the movie sucked without trying to figure out who actually suggested the movie.

If you drag your significant other to a movie that sucked, you'll proceed to hear about it until the end of time. Laura will usually say something like, "That was a great! (sarcastically)", "Nice suggestion! (sarcastically)" or "Well that sucked! (not sarcastically)."

When we were first dating, I dragged Laura to see Escape From LA, which is the sequel to Escape From New York. Both movies involve the convict Snake Plissken, who was played by Kurt Russell. In the first film, Snake is recruited to rescue the president of the united states from New York City, which had been turned into a city-wide prison in the not-so-distant future. I loved that movie growing up and had high hopes for the sequel, but it sucked so bad that I almost walked out of it. Laura was almost ready to leave with me, but I just had to see how it ended, which was horribly by the way. I apologized a lot that night and was reminded a few times by Laura on how just how bad it was.

About a month later, a movie called Two Days in the Valley came out. Laura wanted to see it. I was up in the air about it because it looked like it was trying to be like Pulp Fiction, and I was afraid that I would be comparing the movie to Pulp Fiction. Laura won out and we saw it. The movie was about a hired killer who likes to give someone a a minute on a stop watch before he kills them (James Spader), his girlfriend (Charlize Theron), a woman who hired the killer (Terry Hatcher), two undercover cops (Jeff Daniels and Eric Stoltz) and various other stars that all intersect in lame plot lines for two days of story. Halfway through, Laura leaned over to me and whispered yelled, "This is dumb! I want to go!"

I shook my head, "I want to see how it ends."

I've never walked out of a movie on purpose (save for when Julia demanded we leave a kid's movie because she was scared), so I just wanted to see how it ended on principle. It was an okay movie all in all, but certainly no Pulp Fiction by a long shot. The ending was okay. As we were walking out, I turned to Laura and said, "We're even."

So back to what I was just talking about earlier...

Laura and I have had this understanding that if one of us says that we want to see a movie together, then it behooves the other person to not see that movie.

I slipped up once on this rule, and I still hear about it.

That was ten years ago...

Ten years ago, I was on a book-buying trip for the Nebraska Book Company. I was one of those guys that would buy back books from the students on college campuses. My trips would occur in December and May to coincide with the end of the campus semesters. Before I left in May of 1998, Laura noted to me that she wanted to see Deep Impact, the movie about a comet that is going to hit Earth unless some astronauts can blow up it up first.

While on the trip, the guys that I was on the road with all said they wanted to see a movie, which was Deep Impact. So I made the decision to just see the movie and act like I hadn't seen it when I got back.

So I saw it on the road. It was a decent movie. I then came home and saw it with Laura. When the movie was over, Laura said, "That was pretty good." What I should have said was nothing, but what I did say was, "Yeah, for the second time that I saw it."

I smiled. Laura did not.

"You've already see this?" she asked.

"Yeah, I saw it on my trip with the guys."

So you would think that this would be the end of that, but now almost every time a movie comes out and she wants to see it with me, she usually reminds me that she doesn't want to me to see it like I saw Deep Impact without her.

She reminded me of this just recently when I said that I wanted to see The Dark Knight, which I was thinking of doing when she was gone in Kearney visiting her parents. She said, "I want to see it. Don't see it like you saw Deep Impact."

"Are you always going to hang that over my head?" I asked.

She walked away and shrugged as if to say, "Hey, you're the one that messed up. Not me."

So back to me talking to Pat, I said, "I still get grief for seeing that crappy movie without her and that was 10 years ago!"