First of all, Happy Birthday to my lovely wife Peg.  My beautiful granddaughter Charlotte is 3 months old today and, although I’ll be a gentleman and not reveal Peg’s age, I have made her angry by telling her that she’s 224 times older than her granddaughter!

They say that the key to a successful marriage is open communication and keeping no secrets.  A nice concept in theory.  But over the last 34 years we’ve discovered that, sometimes, what you don’t know can’t hurt you.

Those of you that fly know that occasionally things happen in an airplane that, let’s just say, could be considered terrifying.  Whether it’s a close encounter with your wingman, or the ground, or the weather, or even a projectile aimed in your general direction, if you fly long enough you’ll eventually encounter something that inspires you to kiss the ground when you land.  Not long after we were married I had my first hair-raising flying experience.  After the adrenalin wore off I told Peg the whole story.  I gave her every gory detail assuming she would be impressed with the prowess of the crew in extricating us from a dangerous situation.  I had been told that “sharing” was very important to a healthy marriage and that we need to be open with our “feelings” both positive and negative.  Her reaction wasn’t quite what I expected.  After a few silent moments she said; “You need to never tell me anything like that again”.  “But”, I replied, “We’re supposed to share everything, not keep any secrets.  How can we ever maintain a state of marital bliss if we don’t tell each other everything?”  “Well”, she said, “I’d rather maintain my sanity, so feel free to keep any secrets that would otherwise cause me undue stress”.   There you have it, carte blanche!

I was never quite sure if her definition of “undue stress” matched mine but it’s an arrangement that served us well for over three decades.  I got to survive near death experiences and she got to live a stress free life.  We did, however,  have one caveat to this arrangement.  She agreed that after I retired she would be willing to hear all of the stories she had missed over the years.  In her mind, since I wasn’t flying anymore, she wouldn’t have to worry about future life threatening events.  So, over the next several weeks, I’ll be sharing what I call “The Stories Peg Has Never Heard”.  Many of you have heard, or been involved in, these stories but I’ll redact names as necessary or call everyone involved my favorite anonymous name “Fred”.

I do have one non-flying secret which my wife discovered two days ago.  Like many families, we have a place in the house where we keep all of our keys.  Right after we were married Peg decided that we should have a place right inside the door to the garage where we would always put our keys so we wouldn’t be running around the house looking for them.  It’s what her family did and it’s a great concept.  For a while we used little hooks on a piece of wood but eventually we had too many keys so we switched to a basket (Longaberger of course!)  I immediately embraced the concept because I was pretty fed up with searching purses and coat pockets for keys.  However, for any plan to work you have to actually use it.  So one day, over twenty years ago, after furtively searching the house for either set of car keys, I decided that I would have to secretly modify the plan.  I would leave my spare set of keys in the basket, but I would hide my real set of keys in a place which was in plain sight for me but where Peg would never see them.  On top of the refrigerator, there’s a 3 inch gap between the top of the fridge and the bottom of the upper cabinet and for the last twenty years I have put everything that Peg doesn’t need to see, there.  Most of the things are just things I don’t want to get misplaced during a “cleaning frenzy” but, occasionally, I’ll put something like a gift jewelry box there because I know she’s not tall enough to see it and she has no reason to climb up and take a look.

When I first started putting my keys there I wanted to test the system so I drew up a gift certificate that entitled the bearer to a dinner at the restaurant of their choice valid for one year.  If she found it and cashed it in then I would know that my “in plain sight” hiding place wouldn’t work.  I remembered that it was up there five years later.  It hadn’t been moved.  Two days ago, with her car at the dealership, she needed my cars keys.  Somehow she didn’t notice my spare keys at the bottom of the basket and she yelled upstairs; “Where are your car keys?” and I yelled back, “Where they always are, on top of the fridge!”.  “Since when?” was her reply.  “Since forever” and then I realized the jig was up.  I need to come up with a new secret.

“The Stories Peg Has Never Heard” starts next week!