I have been married to my best friend now for nearly 17 years.  Just the other day I was looking back over the years at all of our highs and lows, and I remembered something.  When we were first married, as with most new marriages, there was a lot of romantic gestures, attentiveness, and memento type gifts, the usual honeymoon phase behaviors.  One morning, as I was getting ready for the day, my eye caught sight of what looked like a post it note.  Oddly, it was in the shower of all places.  I leaned forward and snatched it off of the wall to find that it read, “I love the way your hair smells”.  As I stood there thinking how sweet it was, my eye was drawn to the towel shelf above the toilet, where there was another sticky note.  It took me an entire day to find all of the notes that he had strategically left throughout the house for me to find. I cherished each and every one of those little things. 

Through time and circumstance, I have lost the little notes but not the memory of tenderness they left behind.  We all know how life gets in front of everything, and I realize that over the years, he continued to occasionally write me poems, or letters that I have actually saved, thank goodness. 

When I was thinking back the other day, I realized that I had not written to him for a long time.  Why is it, when we go through difficulties, we hold back from one another instead of leaning in for support.  Well, anyways, no excuses…I am going to make an effort to write a love note back to the big idiot. 

Now, here is where I have to explain the Idiot title.  If you knew my husband and I, you would know that our life is a bit on the rough side, and ours is a hard love… so I have a tendency to be brutally honest.  I have come to believe something about a person, whether it is a man or a woman makes no difference.  When it comes to human nature, we all are made up of a percentage of Idiot and a percentage of what we will kindly call a Buttnugget.  Deal with it because I used to have a mouth worse than a trucker and God said to cut it out, so I chose the best alternative.  It is not my fault, as I am somewhat new to not using profanity, so I am learning. 

Anyway, what we want to hope for, in ourselves and people that we entrust our hearts to, is to come out at least at about a 60/40 split.  We know that it is impossible to be perfect, but our aim is to be more of an Idiot than a Buttnugget! 

Here is the difference…the idiot is still going to screw up, hurt you, fail you or sometimes just do things that make no sense.  But there is no spite, no malice, no ill will intended.  Just being human.  The Buttnugget, however, chooses to be that way.  There is always a motive, or spitefulness of the heart.  We all have met that one person that does things that we cannot fathom for no apparent reason other than to cause harm. 

If you can follow this reasoning, then you will appreciate why I call my husband, My Idiot!  He is, in my opinion, one of the best human beings I have ever encountered on my journey.  I can confidently attest that he is, in my eyes an 80/20!  I am very grateful for this, as I have a running average of 60/40!  We would be in trouble if his numbers were off, cause I am mean!