At a Valentine’s party last month, my wife and I joined the other married couples in a game similar to The Newlywed Game, only in our case the Oldlywed Game would be a more appropriate name. Anyway, just like in the old television game show, we were given a series of questions designed to determine which couple knew each other the best.

The first question was: When and where did you first meet?

Piece of cake, I thought. It just so happens that I know exactly where I was when my wife and I met, and I remember the exact date because it happened to be St. Patrick’s Day.

Without giving it more than a few seconds of thought, I wrote down, “My future wife’s apartment in Gallatin, Tenn., on Oct. 17, 1976.”

Bingo! My wife wrote down the same thing, as I knew she would. Score one for our side.

The second question was tougher: What is your wife’s favorite flower?

My wife loves flowers and gardening, but if she ever told me what her favorite flower was, I don’t recall it.

Stumped for an answer, I wrote, “I have no earthly idea,” in response.

A few minutes later, my wife revealed her response to the same question: I have no earthly idea.

You know you have been married a long time and know each other pretty well when you come up with the same non-answer to the same question.

(For the record, my wife and I did not win this party game. A couple wed in Iran got one more question right than my wife and I did. I wasn’t the least bit envious. I was just happy at how well we did do.)

While we met on St. Patrick’s Day, our meeting had absolutely nothing to do with the holiday. I was editor of the tri-weekly newspaper in Gallatin at the time, and a friend who had been coordinating the writing of a series of bicentennial columns on local history asked me to ride along with her and she picked up the next column from a friend who was typing it.

It was all a set up. The friend was playing matchmaker and having already determined that Lynda Bissell and John Cannon

would be a “perfect match,” she concocted a way for us to meet. It was kind of hokey, but it worked. A spark that continues to burn was lit that night.

That’s why my wife and I continue to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day even though we are neither Cathlolic or Irish. As it turns out, she has to work tonight and I have obligations at church, but if all goes as planned, we still will find a way to celebrate our “anniversary.”

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Since the count now is officially under way for the 2010 census, the time is right for two funny stories involving counting.

“How many people are in your family?” my wife asked a first-grade boy in her class.

“Oh, Miss Cannon, I don’t rightly know,” he responded. “We had a ‘union last summer and there must be hundreds.”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” my wife explained. “What I need to know is how many people are living in your apartment?”

“Oh,” the kid replied. “Three.”

Many years ago, my father was being paid by the U.S. Census Bureau to help with determining how many farm animals there were in the United States. For the most part, farmers either mailed in their census forms, or responded to questionnaires over the telephone.

As Dad was looking over the completed forms filled out from telephone interview, he was surprised that one farmer reported having 3,023 pigs.

Dad knew the farm well and found it impossible that so many pigs could live on such a small farm. So he called the farmer to verify the reported results.

“Did you say you had 3,023 pigs?” Dad asked the farmer

“Yeth, thath what I thaid,” the farmer replied with a lisp.

Without asking any more questions, Dad changed the answer to “three sows and 23 pigs.”

I can’t tell whether the story is accurate or just a funny tale Dad liked to tell, but a half century later, I still remember it.

JOHN CANNON can be reached at jcannon@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2649.