Cultcha

 Pity my wife. Not simply because she ended up married to me. Admittedly that can be a pretty mixed bag. She puts up with plenty, but she is generally treated with respect and positive intent. 

Except when it comes to camping. As I have mentioned here before, summers in my youth were spent living in a log cabin surrounded by nature's wonders. There is a certain allegory for me in the notion of hauling a tent out into the woods on purpose and the suggestion that you would willingly jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Why bother? I should note here that I have not jumped out of a perfectly good airplane, but I have gone camping, a few times, with my wife. 

Another place where this kind of discrepancy occurs is in the realm of the arts. My wife is one who delights in muses of all kinds. Dance, music, theater, and visual arts are extremely important to her. Not that they aren't for me. I'm a big fan of art. The difference being that I grew up in a household that made performing arts a priority. We went to the opera. We went to plays. We went to concerts. The fact that weekly broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera filled our house on Saturdays prepared me for a childhood trip to Manhattan where we all got dressed up and attended a performance of Marriage of Figaro at the Met. We maintained a steady presence whenever road companies of Broadway shows made their way to Denver. Frank Langella as Dracula. Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain. We saw ballet. We heard symphonies. 

My mother played classical piano. She read voraciously. Her three sons took piano lessons. We also read voraciously. As a family we were, effectively, steeped in culture. By the time my wife and I walked back down the aisle after we were married to the strains of Beethoven's Ode To Freedom, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, I felt that I had my fill. 

But that's nearly thirty years ago. All those chamber music and choral performances. Operas and plays and symphonies and still more operas. Testing my wife's patience with all my stories of Broadway shows I have seen in my youth. Can't I get some credit for all that prior culture? 

Or maybe I should show a little pity for my wife and take her camping somewhere near the Metropolitan Opera House.