Growing up the son of a Republican Baptist CPA, you'd think my sense of humor would revolve around spelling upside-down words on a calculator or funny pastor jokes. Instead, my dad's sense of humor usually involved acting like he'd run over my bike with his car or funky lay-up routines during basketball practice. It really shone on our road trips to funerals when he would have my brother and I guess where and how he was thinking of having his ashes buried. Although my guesses always involved  being shot out of anti-aircraft guns on our local retired battleship, he would never give us a straight answer as to where he wanted his ashes buried (he's not the cremating type anyway).

I suppose all of that morbid upbringing could explain a game that my wife and used to play called "Kiss me, I'm dead". When we first got married, we were crazy in love. We decided to get married 3 days after we met (literally). We saw a French movie where the couple jumped off a bridge because they were so in love and we understood why. But months after the wedding, we mellowed and began playing a game called "Kiss me, I'm dead."

When you fall in love with someone, and open yourself up to them emotionally, you really start to consider obsess over their mortality. You think about what it would be like if they died in a horrible train wreck, or what they might look like in a casket. So to prepare for this eventuality, one of us would hold our breath, lay motionless on the bed while the other would look and mourn their beloved's passing. They would bend down to kiss, one last time before being laid to rest. It was a fun game, but we took it seriously and would make sure to play after church, when both of us were dressed with more appropriate funeral attire, and then the deceased would hold an ice cube to their lips for a few seconds so that when kissed they felt really dead, you know, for dramatic effect.

Eventually, we tired of this game, and started expressing our love through more traditional rituals such as holding hands and singing "Turn around... Bright eyes" as a duet whenever the dishwasher runs loud enough we don't think anyone can hear us. If you and your spouse are currently taking each other's good health for granted, I recommend a quick game of "Kiss me, I'm dead." It will bring you closer together and probably get you thinking maybe you're not in such good health after all.