Helen and Edwin were married on Veterans Day, November 11, 1984, and that means that today, Veterans Day, November 11, 2009 is our 25th Wedding Anniversary. I went to school when math was still taught.

This means that 98.376 percent of our critics have been wrong for 24 ½ years. Many of them are dead. Many not yet dead are divorced. We know people who have gotten married and divorced several times during our period of coverture. We have been married as long as John Keats was alive.

The most frequently asked question of my Helen, now as then, is still “How do you put up with him?”

My Helen is a direct descent of one of the witches of Salem. This explains much.

For our 25th Anniversary, I have constructed a wonderfully romantic adventure. I have booked the very same room in the very same luxury hotel in which we spent our wedding night, 25 years ago this very day. No Motel 6 for us this night. The staff of the hotel were all a giggle at the outrageous romance of the idea. The very same room, by dog!

I decline to here reveal the hotel or the room number. For once, we would like this evening to be free of supplicants seeking healings and such.

Oh, how do I happen to remember the exact room number? I wrote it down in the Gideon Bible I stole from the room on our wedding night, that’s how. In this family bible is notated the date and the event and the hotel and the room number. This may make it worth 35 cents more on e-bay in 375 years.

Tonight I plan to steal another such bible from the same hotel room, and to annotate it as well, to add to my growing collection of stolen and annotated Gideon Bibles. Assuming, that is, that the bible has been replaced sometime in the intervening quarter century.

Thus as it is written, thus let it therefore also be done. And remember, it is a naive man who thinks his daughter has religion when she comes home with a Gideon Bible in her suitcase.

Edwin