A story...

I was just thinking about this little story I heard about an old married couple. The man was crotchety and gruff and completely pessimistic, and his wife was nagging but in an endearing way. One day they went on a boat cruise that also happened to have a fishing contest going at the same time. Now in order to actually win you would need to have purchased a raffle ticket. So even if you caught the biggest fish, if you had no ticket, you received no prize, which in fact was around $5000! So the man and his wife boarded the boat, and set out for a day at sea. Now the husband wanted nothing to do with raffles and the like, and told his wife, “I don’t want to buy no damn raffle ticket”, which the wife replied, “Fine, but don’t come crying to me, when you need one.” The gruff old man went fishing and low and behold he caught the largest fish of the day. When he went to show the judges, his prize fish, they said to him, “You have indeed caught the largest fish, but do you have a raffle ticket?” The man hung his head regretfully and was about to say no, when his wife came forward with a raffle ticket she had gone on to buy, regardless of what her husband had said. And as the judges handed over the money to the couple, the wife looked at her husband and said, “Eat Crow!”
And so this couple tells this story with a glimmer in their eyes, and a smidgen of a smile on the old man’s face. And you know without a doubt that this grumpy old man loves his wife, and the wife loves her husband, not despite of his crotchetiness, but because of it.