Since February is the month of love, I would like to talk about my wife.

I met the woman who would become my wife in 2009. We both worked part time in go-nowhere jobs and hit it off. We had the worst first date in the world. I was over an hour late because of a rehearsal, I was so dehydrated I had a migraine, we saw the oh-so-romantic film Inglourious Basterds, a bottle of rootbeer exploded all over me, and then I decided that it would be nice to go for a romantic ocean-side walk at this old military barrack just outside of downtown. Turns out that at night, trenches, old concrete gun turrets, caged off barracks and total darkness doesn’t scream romance, so much as just screams.

For some reason she said yes to a second date. (To be fair, I am very handsome, funny, charming and most importantly … humble.) Over the years, before we walked down the aisle together, she helped change me. She helped me figure out who I am and help me to be more honest and far more appropriate at family functions. My wife is a nurse. Through our time together she has gone through all of her intense schooling, endless practicums (where they do real work for no money) and is now a full time nurse.

There is a lot she can’t tell me about her work. Privacy means that I only get a glimpse of what her days and nights are like. I know that there is a lot of good and a lot of bad. I know that if you buy nurses Lacey’s cookies from Costco, they will be your friend forever. I also know that my wife could stab me, and then not let me die. How do I know this? Sometimes she whispers it to me when I forget to do the dishes.

I know that she is extremely happy when she gets to watch a new life come into this world, and I know that when she has to watch a life leave this world, she slips away, has a cry, and then goes back to work.

When she is not helping total strangers back to health, my wife has helped me write and create some of my most popular jokes. My favorite joke to tell is the story of me falling off a treadmill, and while it is a fun story to tell, the truth is that it didn’t happen to me, it happened to my wife. We tweaked, added and made changes to it until it was finished, and now it’s my most popular closer. So what does this say about her? That even as a part time comedy writer, she is still far better and funnier than I am!

They used to use that saying: “Behind every great man is a great woman.“ I am about as far from great as you can get. And there is no woman behind me. The woman beside me, however, is the loveliest woman I know. She is strong, she is smart and she is funnier than I will ever be. She is by far my better half. So to her, and all of the other folks with a special somebody I say … Happy Valentine’s.