The 13th of January, 2007, marked a momentous occasion for the lovely missus and me. Judy and I celebrated our sixth anniversary. Hearing this news one might think, "How in the nameof Mel Gibson's yarmulke did she do one year, let alone six?" The secret, dear friends, is moderation. She only listens to about half of what I say. Things I say generally fall into a few neatly defined categories.

The first and largest category would be the "strained attempt at humor" genre. It is my mission in life to make Judy, as well as most other people I know, laugh. This could be a genuinely witty of the cuff remark on current events. It may come in the form of clever word play. Many times, it manifests itself in sleazy double entendre. One of my favorite things to do is call her at home or on her cell when I know she will not be there to answer and sing her love songs. Sometimes I'll go for the tried and true one that will make her all warm and mushy like "Wonderful Tonight". Other times I will go for the heated and urgent one like "Feel Like Makin' Love". But the one that I know will get saved is when I make up one of my own. These are always sang with lots of gusto and are very heartfelt, but generally concern themselves with favorite body parts and other things that shouldn't be discussed in an open forum. On a related note I also have a performance piece that will deliver a hearty chuckle every time. This would be my world renowned "come in from another room with my sleep shorts pulled up to my nipples doing the demented Ed Grimley skip". I will leave the reader with that disturbing mental picture as we move along.

Another large category would be the "movie quote" genre. There is hardly any sentiment worth making that some cigarette smoking, screenwriting hack hasn't already stated in a manner much more effective than I could muster. I would suspect, however, that this is actually a guy thing. I say this because almost every guy I've ever known at some point or another has answered a question with a movie quote. Heck, sometimes we Y chromosome types will just bounce the quotes of each other for the pure enjoyment of it. It is practically physically impossible for a guy under the age of forty five to go golfing and not quote a line from Caddyshack.

"Cinderella boy, here at Augusta; about to become Masters Champion."

"What we have here is a mixture of Kentucky bluegrass and northern California sinsemilla. The great thing about this is you can play 18 holes on it in the afternoon and then go home and get stoned to the bejesus belt on it later that evening."

This has even rubbed off on Judy. To be fair, she may have also done this before she met me, but we have our favorites that we consistently bounce off of each other. Whenever, we are dressed up for something and one of us goes in for the kiss or hug, the other will say, "Taffeta, darling" from Young Frankenstein. Any time we see a women in stiletto heels, one or the other of us will say, "Those look like comfortable shoes" from Forrest Gump. In fact, there are a whole slew of them from Forrest Gump that we use but time prevents me from listing them all here. Anything with Nicolas Cage is also fair game. The most frequently mined are Gone in Sixty Seconds and The Rock. The second we hear the cowbell on War's most famous song, one of us will chime in with "Low Rider, Donny. Donny, Low Rider". I know it all sounds incredibly romantic, but it works for us. We can't all be Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, can we?

Another slightly more perplexing category of speech would be the "off tangent remark about something we talked about two weeks ago or something I was just thinking about" genre. This is the equivalent of non-profane, conversational Tourette's syndrome. This is how it works: We'll be listening to the radio. An ad comes on for Lewis and Floorwax on the Fox, and I turn to Judy and say, "I hope those people from PETA that killed those pets get jail time," referencing an interview on their morning show from four days before. She'll look at me with that sideways head tilt and wonder what in the heck I'm babbling about. "And that came from where?" she may ask. Sometimes she'll just say, "I got a booger that talk." This references a quote from an "In Living Color" skit in which David Allen Grier plays a befuddled old diner patron that periodically shouts out random declarations. When she says this, I know I've just hit her with the conversational equivalent of a drive by. By and large, I would say we communicate fairly well. At this point, we can practically finish each others sentences anyway.

There are some things about getting married in January that can be challenging. For one, if a couple plans on doing this in the Denver metro area, they will need to call all parties interested in attending and tell them to make hotel reservations before St Patrick's Day of the previous year. Unless the couple has an assortment of guest bedrooms and a living room floor that can comfortably sleep two hundred, the stock show will make this early planning essential.

Any couple with a January anniversary deciding to give a call back to the glory days of their youth with a little bit of car nookie is in for a huge surprise. Let's put it this way; imagine the triple dog dare scene in "A Christmas Story" only with assorted body parts instead of a flag pole.

A January anniversary is also astoundingly close to Christmas as well. This means that a wallet that was just getting up off the ground, dusting itself off, and trying to get the license plate number of the truck that just steamrolled over it is again caught in the headlights. We kept it pretty simple this year, though. Judy got me a movie. I wrote her a poem, printed it on fancy paper, framed it for her, and left it in a gift bag on the kitchen table for her the morning of our anniversary. I hit a homer with that one. She got all verklempt and hugged me real tight. That night we went out to supper and the Mammoth game. All in all, it was a pretty good day.

I know Judy and I will always be together. I know this because six years has gone by like six weeks. When a person is with the person they were meant to be with, time is incredibly fleeting. No matter how much time I spend with her, I end up wanting more. When I'm working, I can't wait to get home to see her. When we have the occasional day off together it seems to pass in the blink of an eye. When I think of time with Judy, another movie quote comes to mind: "If I am dreaming, never let me wake; if I am awake, never let me sleep." I love you, baby.