Thanks to Julie1Â and Lady Lawanda,2 I consider myself an expert in the science of detecting activities that are exponentially more enjoyable if done with a lover.3
Note that these items meet one inclusion criteria, the gratification produced by performing the activity with a sweetheart is (at least) ten times greater than if done alone or with a non-sweetheart sort of individual, and one exclusion criterion, the activities are not ephemeral or conceptual (so, no fair listing “falling in love”). In addition, this list does not include exclusively romantic activities (so, there are no items such as “holding hands,” “gazing into one another’s eyes,” “having wild monkey sex on a picnic table at a roadside park,” even though those activities are indeed 10 times more fun with a sweetheart) because that would be way too easy.
10 Things That Are 10 Times More Fun With A Sweetheart
- Reading the Sunday papers in bed4
- Singing any songs but especially “Build Me Up, Buttercup,” the Camp CYOKAMO song, “Do I Have To Dance All Night,” and hymns
- Visiting my mother
- Laughing out loud
- Watching very good and very bad TV shows and movies
- Auditioning new music5
- Creating and performing song parodies and semi-salacious to lusciously lewd limericks
- Attending weddings, especially weddings of people to whom the social connection is just close enough to obligate attendance
- Watching college basketball
- Looking at family photos
- Julie Showalter was my fiercely intelligent, wickedly sexy, and much beloved wife with whom I had a outrageously wonderful 20 year marriage that ended with her death in late 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding. She was also a prize-winning author. Many posts on this blog are about her, our unlikely romance, and our life together, and still others consist of her writings. Information can be found at Julie Showalter FAQ.↩
- Lady Lawanda was the blogonym of the woman in my life for the past four years. She was a leader in her work and her community and an inspiration to everyone who came to know her. Our time together was, much like my marriage to Julie, ridiculously happy but all too short. Lawanda died of breast cancer nine months ago.↩
- It is, of course, possible that I am only an expert in the science of detecting activities that are exponentially more enjoyable if done with Julie or Lawanda; in either case, I am grateful for the chance I had to learn from them.↩
- Among the always-read and always-savored sections of the Sunday papers were horoscopes (in which we didn’t believe), Dear Abby (whose advice we never heeded), Goren on Bridge ( a game I have never played), the column on coin collecting (a hobby of mine as recently as the three weeks following my tenth birthday), and all the comics (including those such as Funky Winkerbean, Gil Thorp, and Family Circus, for which there exists mathematical proof of incompatibility with humor, drama, or human interest beyond a macabre curiosity about why they were allowed to exist) ↩
- The most spectacular example of which was the day Lawanda and I first heard and instantly became enamored of Anjani’s Blue Alert album↩
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