My wife and I met on a blind date in 1975. We had lunch at the Whiffletree. We strolled around Ann Arbor swapping philosophical insights. Later in the evening I played my guitar and sang John Denver songs to her, while she convincingly pretended to enjoy them.

By the end of that date we were spouting love sonnets and declaring our mutual devotion to the heavens. We were Romeo and Juliet, only without all the poisoning and stabbing.

Our second date just happened to be on Valentine's day. It was a very good Valentine's day.

Just a little over six months after we met, we got married. We were terrific newlyweds. We didn't have much money, but we discovered that you could still have quite a bit of fun if you stuck to the cheap draft beer and the house wine.

Over the next few years, I worked on polishing up those John Denver songs and learned some Paul Simon. She managed to remain fairly cheerful through it all, and took up macramé. Then along came Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight," and nine months later our son was born.

The whole romance thing changes quite a bit once you have a child. Those nights we used to spend listening to some local band screaming out its interpretation of "Sweet Home Chicago," gazing at each other over glasses of cheap draft beer and house wine, suddenly turned into afternoons spent gazing at the kid over plastic cups of diet Coke, enduring the sound of five thousand or so video games in the Chuck E. Cheese as they waged a kind of ear-shattering sonic warfare with a Muzak version of "Shake My Sillies Out."

We spent the next eighteen years working our way pretty much full-time through a parade of diapers, sippie cups, chicken pox, swimming lessons, bicycles, hockey tournaments, little league, viola lessons, braces, girlfriends, strange haircuts, guitar lessons, snow boards, jet skis, driving lessons, cars and, ultimately, colleges.

And now it's just the two of us again. These days what we really enjoy doing on long winter evenings mostly involves sitting in our comfy chairs side-by-side in the living room, watching Family Guy reruns. Whoever manages to stay awake until 11 p.m. when the Daily Show comes on gets to pick out what flavor of juice we buy next time we mosey on over to the Costco.

Yes, this 1970's Romeo and Juliet have become a 21st century incarnation of Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. After more than 30 years, she knows enough not to talk to me in the morning until I start to whistle, and I know that I'd better darned well do some whistling in the morning if I'm going to get any breakfast. Not only have we gotten all grainy and sepia-toned, we have become so totally predictable that each of us almost always knows what the other is going to say next. Luckily, we both also know that finishing the other person's sentence would be grounds for divorce.

To a young person all this may seem like a fate worse than losing cell service, but it's really not so bad.

This Valentine's Day we'll probably do something romantic, like split an order of Shanghai Noodles and get the vacuum cleaner repaired. But at some point maybe we'll also see if we can line up some cheap draft beer and house wine... and do a little bit of gazing.

Just for old times' sake.

Copyright © 2009, Michael Ball

Mike Ball is the Erma Bombeck Award-winning author of "What I've Learned So Far..." and the book What I've Learned So Far... Part I: Bikes, Docks & Slush Nuggets.