Conversation with My Wife (32)
Apparently the new “CHiPs” have some dips in it?
We’re listening to the morning radio. The new CHiPs movie is coming out, and the female DJ is emoting about her young crush on Eric Estrada in the original CHiPs TV show.
DEB: “I wasn’t crazy about Eric Estrada. I liked Jon Baker. He just seemed more serious, more likely to follow the rules. I was at an age when that was important to me.”
ME: “And yet you married a guy who is cracking dumb jokes all the time and has a very elastic view about rules?”
I was in the Navy during my formative years, from 1976 until 1990. An unspoken assumption in the Navy outlook on life — one I didn’t even realize until I was stationed in Seoul, Korea on a US Army base — is that anything not forbidden is allowed. Whereas the Army operates under the philosophy that anything not allowed is forbidden. This made for the occasional interesting (and ultimately unresolvable) culture clashes between us and our Army compatriots. In contrast, we got along great with the Koreans.
DEB: “I didn’t know that about you when we started dating, honey.”
ME: “Really? So — ”
DEB: “So when you started going through doors marked ‘NO ADMITTANCE’ because they didn’t say ‘NO ADMITTANCE, AND WE MEAN YOU, JACK,’ yes, it was a little surprising at first.”
