Zombied with Children

Every Tuesday we’ll post something to do with restoring marriages. Hope it helps.

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Zombied with Children 

The current rage of all things zombie – The Walking Dead series on AMC, zombie movies, zombie apocalypse enthusiasts – is puzzling. The creatures are, after all, nothing new, having been described in countless novels and horror films, so why they’re enjoying such popularity now eludes me. And it’s not as if they have qualities you can connect with, as some monsters do. Frankenstein’s creature had a certain childlikeness to him; Dracula was debonair; the Phantom of the Opera had talent. But zombies are by their nature inaccessible, displaying little you can relate to. They don’t speak, feel or emote, so while I admit the ghouls in Michael Jackson’s Thriller video were fun, there’s a clear limit to any zombie’s charm, even a dancing one.

All of which comes to mind because this morning I read in our local paper that our city’s now been blessed with zombie carolers. I couldn’t make this up. The photos show them shuffling through our lovely old historic plaza, blood dripping from rotting flesh as they sing good tidings.

I am unquestionably too old for this world, because I can’t begin to guess why they’re singing or which selections they perform. Pick any Christmas carol, imagine it delivered by an undead chorale, and you gotta say “huh?” Yet I’m commanded to yank the log from my own eye before I attempt to remove a speck from someone else’s, so before casting the first stone at my grey-toned neighbors I wonder if I, as a husband, am really without similar sin.

Renee says I grunt; there’s the first clue. I can neither confirm nor deny this, since she says I do it right after waking up, a daily period I’m unable to remember or take any responsibility for. She complains, and I doubt she’s lying, that she’ll ask me questions and get a grunt in response. Then, when protesting that she can’t hear me, she gets a louder grunt, so maybe my zombie brethren and I share some common ground there.

And with the shuffle, something I’m aware of because my wife and sons have repeatedly mimicked me creaking down the stairs in the morning, eyes half closed, boxers rumpled, body jerking back and forth, hair spiked in all directions, growling and grunting all the way. I’ll skip what they say about my breath, which evidently rivals The Exorcist in true horror, but I get the point: I’m scary.

Zoned out, too, a sin I attribute to too many ‘to-do’s’ on the list, leaving me pre-occupied in one world while in the other, my poor wife, who’s just been telling me something urgent and getting the blank stare in response, is fond of saying “Hello? Am I addressing the living?”

Long as I’m confessing, I’ll also cop to being awfully predictable. Just like my undead bros, you can pretty much tell where I’m going and what I’ll do on any given day, with little or no variation, so like them, I offer few surprises. Next to adultery, wife beating or financial irresponsibility, that may sound tame, but I really do think we husbands have a mandate to be a bit interesting to the women who’ve become so accustomed to our patterns. There’s nothing stimulating about the lug who moves about in a scripted routine, so this morning, after reading up on the caroling corpses and thinking this all over, I slapped myself awake, bounded downstairs, swept Renee up in my arms and said, “Great night’s sleep, feeling fine. Come with me, wife, and let us kick butt victoriously today. All butts that submit will be shown mercy; all others must die.”

Yeah, I really said that. I thought I was pretty good, but she didn’t. So tomorrow? Same enthusiasm; less over the top. And an occasional grunt for form.

It won’t hurt any of us, guys, to try keeping them entertained. We will fail, as I did, to be genuinely clever, but they’ll love us for the effort. A slow death to any relationship is boredom, so if we can’t make enough money or keep up with all the chores, good grief, let’s at least try to be a little interesting. They deserve it.

And maybe that’s a lesson we can learn from all the zombie fads. They remind us of what we could become, and must avoid.