A Mismatched Puzzle

We are the two most different people you could piece together. Our puzzle pieces don’t seem to fit, except that when you do manage to mash them together they look rather nice together. “Hmmm, does that look like a flower to you?” you think and for awhile you agree that yes, that could very well be the missing piece. And yes, a turquoise and pink flower is just what the puzzle was missing.

And then his misshapen corners begin to grate on your nerves.

“What do you mean you don’t like to read?” I asked him. “Who doesn’t read?” He’s an Ivy League graduate, not an illiterate. How on earth can he embrace Family Guy and not a novel? But there we sit, him guffawing to Peter Griffin’s latest antics and me lost in my newest Barnes & Noble clearance find. Sometimes I forget and begin to read him quotes aloud, suggesting that he delve into it next. He won’t. I miss talking about books.

Music is another one of his dislikes. Not that he dislikes it as much as doesn’t have a particular interest in it in either way. He could do without the noise. Kelly Clarkson can stay because she’s hot, but the indie bands that I love so much? Noise, all of it.

It was the strangest of things that finally sent me over the edge. “Fresh cut grass,” I sighed as we drove through the country on a lazy afternoon, “That is the best smell in the world. Right next to doggy breath and swimming pool chlorine.”

“What?” he asked.

“Smells,” I replied. “Don’t you just love how a certain smell can bring you right back to a memory?”

“No, I’ve never had that,” he responded. And that was that.

No smells, no books, no music. What a dull life my uninspired boyfriend leads. He needs me for these things. I am the Dharma to his Greg. Two seemingly mismatched souls that need each other. He keeps me grounded. I help him to float.

I don’t know why I love him, except that I do.