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Marriage means never having to say you’re sorry for dropping your wife before you reach the finish line
BY STEVE ALMOND
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It is certainly fair to ask me how it is I wound up in attendance at the fourth annual North American Wife Carrying Championships (NAWCC). Let’s start here: I took a little weekend jaunt up to Bethel, Maine. The idea was to have a rustic experience. This meant bathing in an ice-cold brook, going potty in an outhouse, hiking through autumn foliage, and so on. As a suburban Jew, I find all these activities frankly troubling. However, I did not want the rest of the group to turn against me, so I went along with the program. Then we stopped to get a map of the area, and I couldn’t help but notice an item in the local paper announcing the aforementioned NAWCC, which was slated to begin that very hour at the nearby Sunday River Ski Resort. I should mention that I do not (to my knowledge) have a wife. But if I did have one, I can think of nothing more romantic than the chance to carry her over a rugged, 278-yard obstacle course, with a drunk, sun-stroked crowd hooting at us. I realize that I may be oversimplifying the historical and global import of this event, so let me back up. The wife-carrying concept dates back to a Finnish fellow named Rankainen the Robber, who was apparently quite picky about staffing issues. In addition to providing a detailed résumé and three references, deputy thieves were required to complete a set of rigorous activities with heavy sacks on their backs. How this morphed into carrying women on their backs remains a little murky, but the important thing to remember is that modern wife-carrying events are not just sexist freak shows staged for the benefit of the sponsors. This became totally obvious the moment we arrived at the NAWCC course, where the competitors were huddled at the bottom of a ski lift, a few engaged in that most ancient of marital rituals — the argument. The crowd, meanwhile, lined the horseshoe-shaped race course, most of them clustered around a long, murky trough of water. I had assumed, somewhat romantically, that the competitors would employ the classic newlywed, over-the-threshold carrying position. Not so. In fact, when the first team headed up the hill, it appeared they were engaged in, well, some kind of high-speed sexual prank. The man was wearing his wife sort of like a backpack, with her legs scissored around his neck, her head pressed against the small of his back, and her hands thrown around his waist. The expression on her face was one of monumental and flushed forbearance. As it turned out, these two were the Canadian national champs, and they had a small phalanx of fans on hand, waving little maple-leaf flags and cheering in that friendly, bland manner that Canadians favor. The real suspense came as the Canadians approached the water hazard. The event organizers, evidently feeling that last year’s edition lacked the necessary aquatic drama, had made the trough deeper this year. Thus, as the Canadian husband clambered down into the pit, he stumbled a bit and the tips of his wife’s hair brushed the surface of the water. There was a collective intake of breath. But then — showing the form that has earned Canada status as a hotbed of wife-carrying — the husband regained his balanced and slogged through the muck. The next couple did not fare as well. Oh sure, they were quick out of the gate. But it was this very speed that was their downfall. Rather than taking a slow approach to the trough, the husband charged down the short incline and promptly pitched over into the muck. His wife was submerged for a good 10 seconds before hubby righted himself. Thus a certain grim pattern was established. As we watched the next dozen competitors, the crowd seemed to divide itself into two distinct camps: those who wanted to see a spill, and those who really, really wanted to see a spill. (I myself formed a distinct, third faction: those who wanted to see a spill, but felt guilty about such feelings.) Perhaps the most poignant moment of the NAWCC came with the appearance of couple 21. They were quite different from most of the other teams in two senses. First, the husband did not weigh three times as much as the wife. In fact, he seemed to be about the same weight as his wife. Also, the couple was, by wife-carrying standards, ancient. That is, their combined age was well over 70. The husband in question had a healthy complement of gray hair. It was quite moving watching him chug through the first half of the course, slower and slower, his slender legs starting to wobble, his wife urging him, "Come on, honey! You can do it! A little longer!" There was a strange intimacy to these exhortations, as if, perhaps, someone had bugged their bedroom. Then came the water hazard. Alas. The husband stopped nearly dead at the edge of the trough and peered down. "Come on, honey!" his wife whispered. "We can do it." He nodded, gloomily, and staggered forward, looking something like a condemned man. Down they went, less than five yards in; it wasn’t pretty. The husband, unable to right himself, seemed to have his wife pinned down. There was a nervous ripple of laughter in the crowd, then silence. I began to wonder if we weren’t witnessing a drowning. But just as the designated lifeguard — a scruffy gent named Greg — looked ready to intervene, the wife burst from the water. She was a formidable sight, red-cheeked and sputtering. Rather than calling it quits (or, as common sense would dictate, making a beeline for the nearest divorce lawyer) she clung to her husband’s neck and exhorted him onward. And, quite miraculously, he moved forward, one excruciating step at a time. The crowd, sensing a small miracle in the offing, began to hoot and cheer. Now: it doesn’t really matter that couple 21 came in dead last. The important thing — and this is something I will truly take away from my special chance to witness the NAWCC — is that nobody died. Steve Almond, who freely admits to being incapable of carrying — let alone marrying — a wife, can be reached at sbalmond@earthlink.net
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