Traditions and rituals, it seems to me, are the glue of relationships. The more rituals you create with people, the more firmly linked you all tend to become, no matter whether it’s work teams, lovers, friends, or family. So a department brings in pizza to the office every Friday; a retired couple goes to the same hotel every year at the same time (and stays in the same room); old high school friends get together on Thanksgiving to play football (my buddies called our annual game the “Turkey Bowl”). As time goes by, these traditions not only provide people with something to look forward to, they also build up a store of collective memories – an oral history, a catalogue of events to be referenced at every reiteration of the ritual. And once a tradition gets started, it can be very difficult to stop it. Somehow, it just takes on a life of its own.
My fiancée, Jen, and I, like any couple, have quite a number of rituals, some quotidian, others a bit more idiosyncratic. Every Sunday morning, for example, we go to brunch at Bambino’s, the Italian place down the street that gives you free scones with your meal. Later that night, we do the Sunday crossword puzzle (by Merl Reagle, our favorite crossword constructor). And every year, on the anniversary of our first date, we write treasure hunt clues for each other. Yes, we are both treasure hunt geeks! I’m not sure how the tradition first started; certainly my business has something to do with it. In addition, Jen and I actually met on a treasure hunt (the annual
Traditions and rituals, as we all know, have rules by which all participants must abide. In our case, the first rule of our anniversary treasure hunt tradition is 1) No one may talk about it in advance. That’s right, the treasure hunt clues have to just appear at some point during the anniversary, without any build up. To paraphrase the movie Fight Club, “The first rule of Dave and Jen’s anniversary hunt is that you do not talk about Dave and Jen’s anniversary hunt.” I suppose this was originally meant to cut down on expectations and to give the other person an out if they were too busy that year to come up with something. Yeah, as if. No matter how busy we are, we both always come up with a treasure hunt.
The second rule of our anniversary tradition is 2) The puzzles and clues must incorporate information about the relationship. So a clue might incorporate pictures of all the places where we like to hang out. Or it might involve a trivia quiz of all our favorite books. This year, for example, I wrote a quiz consisting of characters from our favorite sci-fi TV and movie characters. The point is to draw on your knowledge of your partner as well as from the hobbies/experience/traditions that you share as a couple.
The final rule of our treasure hunt ritual is 3) At least one of the puzzles we write for each other must be completely new – a puzzle type our partner has never seen before. This is the toughest unspoken rule – at least for me. From my perspective, Jen is a fountain of new clue ideas…a virtual clue generator. Me, I have to work a bit harder, scouring puzzle and games books for weeks in advance, looking for something unique and different to borrow or adapt. Because you see, Jen is a darn good gamer. I want my clues both to delight and to challenge her. They’ve gotta strike that right balance, not too easy, not too hard.
Our anniversary, March 21st, just passed and once again we both pulled off the tradition, with pizzazz. Jen wrote me four clues – one particularly cool one using a photocopy of a picture of us cut into jigsaw pieces, another involving a cypher created from barcodes on our favorite energy snack bars. (Clever girl!) My clues for Jen included the above-mentioned sci-fi clue as well as a world map puzzle referring to places we’ve visited together over the last four years.
What will next year’s anniversary treasure hunt be like? Gimme a break; I’ve got 11 months to think about it. Not to mention the fact that we’re getting married in October. Will that inspire a new tradition: the wedding day anniversary treasure hunt? Gosh, I better start preparing, just in case. J