I am, it’s true. Most people may not recognize it, (being 6 foot tall throws some people off), but Clint is actually a Hobbit in disguise. His dream life would be to live in a hole in the ground, spend his time reading and minding his own business and tilling the ground.
I actually had never read or heard of the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings until we started dating. Well I take that back, my roommates had all talked about something during finals week a couple of months before we were dating and they all went to see the opening of the first Lord of the Rings in the middle of the night while I spent my evening buried in the depths of Calculus based Physics (man did I know how to have fun in college!). I had no idea what they were talking about and had no brain capacity to understand it either. However a few months later Clint and I started dating (see here for a description of our first date), and the Lord of the Rings came to the dollar theater in town.
I think Clint was a bit shocked and amazed that I had no idea what a Hobbit was or a wizard or an elf or where Middle Earth was. He quickly corrected that by giving me a book about his native people, Tolkien’s Hobbit. I read through it and actually enjoyed it which was a surprise to me as I am not a fantasy fan at all (too much physics and calculus and molecular biology stuffed in this brain of mine). We went to see the movie and while I totally didn’t understand it we had fun and I began reading through the Lord of the Rings series.
And as time has gone on I have only learned to appreciate my husband’s native culture more and more. Actually when Leighton was first born and in the NICU, Clint read him the entire Lord of the Rings series during his first year of life. Not sure how much Leighton actually caught…but at least he has already heard it once. We (meaning Clint and I, the boys are too young still) have watched all of the Lord of the Rings series, all the extended versions and all the “making ofs” more times than I can count. And we have recently started doing the same with the Hobbit movies.
But this past week, Clint finally hung something up on the walls of his office at our house (we’ve only lived here for 3 years). Now it wasn’t one of the many degrees that we both have earned, no he hung up an official map of Middle Earth. And so there you have it, I am married to a Hobbit.
Hiking Mommy 