Eleventh Anniversary Fun

Dan and I just celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary on Saturday. Number eleven is not one of the "big ones." It's a year after the tenth, so maybe the anniversary gods just figure couples are all partied out by the eleventh. In fact, the traditional gift for eleven years is steel. What the hell kind of of gift is that?

"Good thing we don't get gifts based on the number of years like those crazy people in Gone Girl," Dan said.

"Good thing we don't do a lot of things like those crazy people in Gone Girl," I said.

Now most of my faithful readers will know that Dan and I have never had kids. I have almost six hundred students, and being a teacher is the best birth control ever.

But this anniversary, we felt a little like parents, at least temporarily, because most our special day was spent with my "kids."

Saturday morning, we woke up early, and ran in a Christmas Fun Run with my school's running group. Yes, Dan and I chose to spend the first half of my anniversary with sixty-nine of my students, their family members, and my teacher friends.

Post Fun Run fun

That evening, Dan and I went to The Nutcracker. The ballet probably would not have been Dan's choice for a romantic anniversary date, but two of my students were dancing in the production, and a few of them were singing in the children's chorus. I had been telling them all for months that I was coming to see them.

Anniversary date to the ballet

Actually, Dan didn't mind The Nutcracker that much.

"It's kind of cool story," he said, "although the story part is over by the second half."

I also woke up in the middle of my anniversary night, casting my school's production of Oliver in my head and worrying about disappointing my students in the process. The things we do for our "kids."

One of my student's parents said, "That's what parents do, spend their anniversaries with their children. And then you just move your anniversary to a different day."

I would never claim to work as hard as an actual parent though. Maybe I'm more like the cool aunt who advises the kids going to sleepover that they should eat lots of sugar that night.

And I get to give them all back at the end of the day.

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