By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

Luck may have as much to do with success in life as anything. Or maybe it’s just that what we consider luck is fate in disguise. After all, it doesn’t take much for us to feel like we got lucky, but it takes time and distance to recognize something that might have been fate. (Maybe I should write fortune cookies.)

Either way you look at it, though, you feel pretty damn good to have had the good fortune or good fate to have something great happen in your life. At least that’s how I feel as my wife and I celebrate 10 years of marriage this week.

Yeah, I’m sure some of you old codgers are thinking, “OK whippersnapper, we’ll see how excited you are when the two of you are fighting over the last bit of DentuGrip 40 years from now!” And to that I say Gentry and I are avid brushers and hope to avoid dental squabbles as we age. But I get your point. Ten years may not seem like a terribly long time to be married, especially if you’ve been hitched 20, 30 or 40 years. Or if you’ve been married to Michael Jackson long enough to see what he does with Bubbles’ mummified corpse.

And I’d have to agree that 10 years doesn’t really seem that long, especially when you get to laugh as much as I do. That’s where the luck – or fate – comes in. I was lucky enough to marry one of the funniest people I know, someone who gives me a great laugh or two almost daily. Before I met her, I never knew gorgeous women could also be so funny.

Gentry and I dated for eight years before we got married, so it’s clear we had a few personal issues to hash out. Most of those probably involved her trepidation about marrying someone who thought creamed corn, crackers and Keystone Light was a good dinner.

And I’m sure I didn’t make things easy with her parents. One of the first times I met her father was when he woke up and found me sleeping in my suit on a chaise lounger in their backyard with their smelly 80-pound bulldog lying next to me shoving a slobber-soaked tennis ball in my face. (That was quite a wedding!) Not exactly any girl’s dream introduction of her future husband to her daddy.

But she did finally decide to marry me, and I screwed that up, too. I had my bachelor’s party the Thursday night before we got married and was hung over until halfway through our honeymoon. Luckily the indelible black marker my idiot brothers used to draw a huge handlebar mustache and glasses on my face while I was passed out washed off, or I’m sure Gentry would have walked. Unfortunately, the profane things they wrote all over my back and arms didn’t, making me quite the spectacle as we sipped frozen drinks on the pristine beaches of Antigua.

Glancing over this, I realize at this point I’d better come up with a few good memories, or Gentry’s going to read this and start packing a bag. Really, our whole marriage hasn’t been a series of jackass moves by yours truly – it just seems that way sometimes.

Looking back at our relationship in general and marriage in particular, it’s easy to see all the wonderful things I would have missed out on if Gentry weren’t with me. In many ways she’s bolder than I, and she challenges me to do things I wouldn’t do otherwise. Certainly I would never have had the courage to haul myself over to Venice, Italy for six months without a plan or a place to stay if she hadn’t decided to go to school there.

And I’m sure I never would have visited Kiev, Ukraine a couple of years ago if she hadn’t had the guts to apply for a Fulbright Scholarship. You’ve got to be brave to go someplace like that all alone for six months – especially since a few hours after we landed, terrorists blew up the World Trade Center. If it had been up to me, Gentry would have been on the plane back home with me the next week, but she stayed through February.

I know I would never have had the courage to move to Washington, DC and work in Congress without Gentry by my side. I’d probably still be stuck at the newspaper in Pascagoula, but being with her made me want something better than covering cops in “The City of Seven Smells.” (My favorite was moist cat food. Mmmmm!) I felt a little like Jed Clampett when we first got to DC, but we got “citified” together and even learned the hard way not to order white zinfandel at a fine Italian restaurant.

But it’s not just the big things and bold moments I treasure. It’s the seemingly little things that really are everything; the old house we’ve made our own, the way we think it’s funny to talk like rednecks or to make our rat terriers curse like sailors (only after the kids are in bed!). The way I still think she has the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. The times we’ve forgiven each other for massive stupidities. And the way we’re raising our beautiful children.

Most of all in looking back, I realize without Gentry I would have missed out on a chance to love an amazing person. So it is most certainly my great luck to be fated to spend our lives together, and that thought makes me happy to look forward to the next 40 years, DentuGrip or no.

Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

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