Almost 12 years ago, I gave the wedding speech to top all wedding speeches. It was funny, it had some emotion. But most of all, it was funny. And all at the expense of the groom of the day – my husband. He joked afterwards that it was meant to be a wedding speech, not a mockery. I replied that it was only because he had given me so much material.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about that wedding speech in which I jokingly (but lovingly) went through a list of qualities I always thought the man of my dreams would have and how the man of my reality compares. (Spoiler alert: It would never have worked out with the ‘man of my dreams’.)

You know, my husband has always given me good material for stories. He’s a funny, friendly guy. And he often gets into random situations that I would never get into.

Like the time he booked us tickets to a comedy show performed entirely in Greek – we don’t speak Greek. The many times we had problems at the airport – including when he tried to board a plane (after making it through security) that wasn’t leaving until exactly 12 hours later. The many times I had to pick him up from the train station because he got in the wrong line. The many times he got lost. Or the time he left our four-month-old baby home alone because he’d forgotten we had more than one child – until the first child asked where the second was.

When something unexpected happens, it happens to my husband. He’s often late. He has a very high tolerance for risk. He still has trouble remembering the birthdays of our 12- and 10-year-olds. He’s constantly taking things out and not putting them away. And he starts home improvement projects at the most inconvenient times – like the day we fly out to visit relatives.