Things you will lose when you get married

I was helping my brother and his wife move yesterday (remind me to feign a persistent and very contagious case of pink eye next time someone asks me to help them move) when I was reminded of all the stuff I parted with when I moved in with Groomasaurus Gal, and this got me thinking of all the stuff that most guys lose when they get married or decide to live in sin. The following is an incomplete list of stuff you will inevitably part with, even if your wife/fiancee/girlfriend/sig other doesn’t actually dispose of it herself.

1. Your beer can collection – This should have been reduced to recycling debris by your mom long ago when you were away on your senior class trip (if people actually take these anymore), but in case she couldn’t get to it, your wife/girlfriend will.
2. Your most cherished t-shirt – That Def Leppard 1987 tour t-shirt that now resembles cheesecloth will soon become an implement for cleaning the floors.
3. Your favorite chair – It may be green plaid, it may contain more bacteria than a CDC lab, it may house the largest dust mite in the Western Hemisphere, and it may smell like one big fart, but doggone it, the chair is still as comfortable as the first time your big butt settled down into it. And it will be on the curb inside of a month.
4. Your junk drawer – Although this does contain many innocuous (partial decks of cards, nubs of pencils, etc.) and several useful items (shoestrings, allen wrenches, etc.), the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater due to the presence of a few crumpled, forgotten photographs of ex-girlfriends. Oops, sorry honey.
5. Your stash of Playboy – Even the most straight shooter has a few of these shoved into the bottom of his sock drawer, and you will actually throw these out to avoid any scenario in which your wife finds them, looks at you funny and makes you feel like a cretin (which you aren’t … heck, you first read Philip Roth in Playboy, so it’s not all bad).
6. Your warmest, coziest pair of sweatpants – You won’t lose these, per se … you will simply lose your right to wear them, as your wife will quickly commandeer them as the one article of cothing that makes her feel safe and secure and closer to you (which is kind of cute and sexy). Plus she looks much better in them than you did anyway, so this is a small sacrifice.
7. Your sense of proportion and reality for about 3 days out of every month – When you lived apart, you could manuever around PMS, slaloming around its sharp turns and unseen dips and dives. Now it will hit you head on like a screeching-yet-sympathetic Mack truck, and there’s no getting out of its way. Just remember, she didn’t ask for it either, so hold her hand while you’re both getting run over.
8. The ability to play air guitar while cranking your stereo to 11 without feeling like an idiot – Back when I had my own place, if I was feeling a bit raunchy and rebellious, I would crank up the Ramones or the Replacements, pull out my air guitar and throw down like a rabid Eddie Van Halen. Now every time I turn the stereo up past 9 o’clock I get a look like I should know better and, if that doesn’t do the trick, a comment like “some of us would like to hear ourselves think around here.” And she’s not talking about the dogs.

Now, although this may sound like me bitching, I’m really not, because all these things are totally worth losing. And if I have left anything out (which I’m sure I have) please let me know.