Play One on TV

The other night, I was playing Civilization IV and my wife happened to walk by (this also being her house and all). The game is in the habit of throwing little historical quotes at the player every time a milestone is reached. The one she overheard was a quotation from the poem Ozymandius by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

At this utterance, my wife snorted and muttered “Ozymandius. Huh!” under her breath. I looked at her quizically and realized, to my incredible surprise, that my wife hates that poem!

My wife was an English major in college. She considers Shakespeare and the Brontë to be light reading. Finding out she hates something by Shelley is like discovering that the Pope hates red wine. This is quite a revelation, especially considering we’ve been married 20 years.

I need to haul her down to the university library and figure out what else she hates. Maybe we can find something we both hate and have a good old time making fun of it. I can see us now, getting thrown off campus for making catcalls at the Byron section.