The power of song compels you!

The weekend before Thanksgiving, 1994, Lea and I were invited to a dinner party that was something beyond jeans and let’s have a burping contest, but not quite all the way to taffeta and a rousing discussion of 19th century French poetry. We had been dating a grand total of five weeks, so we weren’t truly serious yet, but we were pretty excited about each other. The forthcoming Thanksgiving Day would be the first time she’d meet my family.

It wasn’t lost on me that the dinner was my first real chance to earn the approval of a lot of Lea’s friends. Lea later told me that her friend Madeline had told her after dinner “either you’re going to marry Bo, or I’m going to have to adopt him.” Oh my, but that’s strong. Is there a nicer thing to say about a person? My head swells a bit even today.

So the meal had gone pretty well. Most of my jokes worked, and I managed not to turn my iced tea over. We moved to the living room, and I noticed Lea had the hiccups.

We sat and had pleasant and appropriate grown-up conversation for a few minutes, and she still had them. In fact, if anything, they’d gotten more frequent. So while someone else was talking, I leaned over and whispered “Lea, we like to sing at my house on Thanksgiving.” She nodded and waved it off. Then I said, “And since you’re new, you’ll have to sing a solo. Is that okay?” She waved me off again, a little more violently. “Is that okay?” I said again–smilingly, insistently. She told me through clenched teeth: “We will discuss this later!” I laughed, and said “I’m just kidding about the whole thing, but I bet you don’t have the hiccups anymore.” She didn’t.

She told me on the way home that I’d been quickly and overwhelmingly red-flagged at the outset of the singing conversation, and that she had started thinking that tonight was the last night I’d ever see her. Thank God it was five weeks, and not five years, before I learned he was cuckoo, she was thinking.

I don’t think I’ve ever scared the hiccups out of her again in nearly 13 years. They’ve been the best times of my life, though, so isn’t it a good thing I was kidding?

Thanks to The Onion for the image.

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