Love at First Stench

Defying her Luddite traditions, Mrs. Cornell has now become a regular reader of this blog, and therefore its harshest critic. She thinks it needs to be funny on a daily basis, which may prove difficult, as she’s not a fan of fat jokes and/or bowel humor, which constitute well over ninety percent of my comedic repertoire.

She learned that early on when we first met, or, at least, the first time she remembers meeting me, which is not the first time I remember meeting her. Her first foray into the life of Stallion Cornell was at the Hollywood Bowl in September of 1992, when she first arrived in Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California in pursuit of a Master’s Degree in Physical Therapy. She also began attending the USC Student Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and on this occasion, the ward had organized a group outing to the Bowl to see the LA Philharmonic accompanying old Warner Brothers cartoons. Dubbed “Bugs Bunny on Broadway,” it was all in honor of animator Chuck Jones’ 80th birthday. Jones himself was in attendance and told some really fun, funny stories about the early days of the studio, when Jack Warner said, “All I know about our animation department is that we make all those Mickey Mouse cartoons.”

This was at the beginning of my own senior year as a theatre major, and I confess that I was a full-on geek at the height of my artsy-fartsiness. Along with a freshman theatre geek who’s name I can’t recall – Jonathan something, I think – I proceeded to make a complete ass of myself, yelling loud, pseudo-profound things and singing at inopportune moments.

According to Mrs. Cornell, and I do not deny it, I was also jovially asking random women to marry me, including her. Was it ironic that we were married almost two years later to the day? If you ask her, it certainly was. This was her first social interaction with the ward, and the future Mrs. Cornell was woefully discouraged thereby. I’ll never fit in here, she thought, because some tall, goofy blowhard was dominating everything, and, even worse, everybody seemed to like him and think he was funny.

Since she was but one of dozens of my female admirers on that occasion, I cannot recall any interaction between us that evening. The first time I took notice of her was during a Sunday service, when she came in late and found the only chair available was right next to me. What I didn’t know was that she had driven all night long to get back to LA so she could hook up with some guy with a motorcycle that she had the hots for. No, all I knew was that she clearly hadn’t showered; she smelled rank, and she had likely dipped her hair in an oil slick. I had come to this service to ponder the deep things of eternity, which was made far more difficult by the human sewer seated directly to my left.

And then, yadda, yadda, yadda, we got married and lived happily ever after. Ain’t love grand?