Today is the 17th wedding anniversary for my beautiful bride, Bonnie, and me. After 17 years living with me, Bonnie deserves a medal.

Actually when you think about it, wedding anniversary presents should be a lot like the medals that war heroes receive. Depending on how many years you are married, you just add a new medal or bar of gold, diamonds or some other important kind of jewel to the set that you have been building up over the years of married life.

I can see it now. You are at dinner and a couple walks in and the woman has like 47 diamonds, six emeralds and a bunch of gold and rubies on her dress. You look at her and you just know that she has earned every one of those jewels putting up with the man now pulling out her chair. Everyone stops and stands and just starts applauding because this couple is celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary.

Along with the jewels on her dress, she also has other awards draped on as well. She has one for most days being under fire by a teenager, a special 25-year pin for putting up with a mother-in-law who thinks her son could have done better (I’m just saying) and, of course, the Medal of Honor. (This is given for giving birth to two or more babies.)

The other way that you choose gifts for anniversaries I never really understood. The traditional list is paper for first anniversary, cotton for the second, and the list goes on until you just hit 60 and then every year after that is diamonds. The 17th anniversary is furniture, and I do not think buying furniture is very romantic.

Buying furniture should only be done two ways. One, when you need it and make sure you let your wife choose it. Two, when you need to get out of trouble and then again, you need to let your wife choose it.

Some other traditional anniversaries are pottery, linens, wood, fruit and, of course, desk sets. Oh, man, if I bought my wife a desk set for an anniversary, I am pretty sure our seventh year pottery would get broken over my head.

Once 17 years rolls around, we men are usually housebroken and just ask our wives what they want. If we want to be really romantic we will buy dinner, send flowers, and then ask our wives what they want.

I have learned that diamonds, gold and cash seem to always fit.

I have also learned to avoid buying clothes, singing fish, and anything that rhymes with vacuum or iron.

Bonnie,

Here is a poem I wrote just for you.

I love you.

Enjoy.

Seventeen years … by me.

Seventeen years sure has gone by fast.

It seems like just yesterday our families were saying it would never last.

Over the years our love has grown stronger.

Sometimes we stay up until 8 o’clock, or on Fridays even longer.

When you get ill I want to take care of you so you don’t get sicker.

Heck, you know it is true love because I give you the television clicker.

When you said “I do” I promised you lots of frills.

I just didn’t know it would be kids, dogs and bills.

My love never wavered, not a minute or even an hour.

Even after the first week of marriage when I realized that I no longer had the power.

But through it all, baby, we have always stood side by side.

I wouldn’t want anyone else to have gone on this lovely ride.

I love you so much and now this poem needs to find an end.

So here’s to 17 more years my love, my wife and my best friend.

Tribune Publisher Scott Schmeltzer’s column appears every Thursday.