Thoughts and observations on looks and love.

It took a long time for my wife to say "I Love You." For me, it was easy. I'm just that kind of guy. I jump head-first into things before knowing what waits for me at the bottom. Plus, she's pretty. Really pretty. And, therein was her reluctance, I think.

She's been pretty all her life. She's never really had to say the words. Pretty people are a different breed. Charmed? Maybe. More like afflicted. Maybe I just like to think that because I am so mildly attractive.

But pretty people are always teachers' pets — the kids who get called on for all the easy questions...

"What's 2 times 2?"

I was the regular kid in the back... "What's 369 times 7?"

The answer, damn you, Mrs. Harper, is 2,583.

"Pretties" are always the first children chosen for school plays. My wife played "Mary" in her 4th grade theatrical presentation of The First Christmas.

268 miles away, I was in the same play. I was a goat.

Pretty people — the poor things — find it difficult to "feel." They don't have to. They don't get the chance. They’re pulled in every-which-direction imaginable. Strangers come up to them in shopping malls, at swimming pools, museums, restaurants and bars. They never get to start a conversation... unless they are playing a game with other "pretties."

But normal people love ALL pretty people. “Pretties” get to choose.

I think the fact that I'm only average looking (and I've always been simply adequate at just about everything I've done) has turned me into the blubbering "feeler" I am today.

But it took my wife a while.

*****

There are certain things at certain times that have a certain appeal to certain people in not-so-certain ways. These “things” are indescribable, but we all have them. For some, it’s the smell of cut grass. That flirtatious glance from a co-worker. The feeling you get when you walk into a Cathedral for the first time. Wildflowers on the side of the interstate. The taste of Bazooka Bubble Gum. Even the sound of a doorbell or a beep from the microwave.

Some might call it déjà vu. I’m not sure what it is, but it takes you some place else… if only for a split second. I think each of us has something that can somehow speak straight to our hearts — as if that's the language that our heart understands better than any other.

My thing is music. Not all music, mind you, but there’s something about a guitar or a piano and a voice, and the feeling I sometimes get when they compliment one another just right…

Bob Dylan. John Denver. David Wilcox. John Hiatt. Eddie Vedder. Allison Krauss. Paul Simon. John Lennon. Neil Young. Shawn Colvin. Stevie Wonder. Eric Clapton. John Lee Hooker. Eva Cassidy. Sting. Leadbelly. Jimi Hendrix. Nanci Griffith. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Ray Charles. Willie Nelson. Muddy Waters. Stevie Ray Vaughan. Hank Williams, Sr...

Even Neil Diamond takes me “there” on occasion.

However silly or irrelevant or embarrassing it may seem. We all have a thing. We’ve all been “there.”

Except for my wife.

She has no “thing,” and she cannot think of a single instance when she’s been taken “there.” I am not certain of whether or not this is true… Perhaps she’s just forgotten about the taste of Bazooka.

No, I don’t blame this on the fact that she’s pretty. It does, however, explain a little about why she had a hard time saying “I Love You”.

But she did. And she does. And I love her back — with every ounce of my heart and every breath of my every day.