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My wife, Ann Marie, is a saint. That's been said on these pages before, and it will be said in the future, but what I can say for the first time is that no one -- no one -- holds a grudge like yours truly.
If you do me wrong, I will hold it against you forever.
For instance, I'm the dad who, because of work, doesn't go to bed each night until about 2 a.m. But I get up at 6 a.m. every morning with my boys to make them breakfast before they go to school.
My wife gets up at 7 a.m., and I always make sure she has breakfast to take with her, along with her lunch that I pack.
Of course, getting my sons to eat breakfast can be a challenge, and I've relaxed my rules over the years. It used to be some kind of cereal, waffles, eggs and/or toast. But as they got older, getting them to eat got harder and harder.
I was at the point where if they ate anything, I felt like I had won the battle. Now, they can still have the aforementioned food items, but they get to choose from cheesesticks, beef jerky, chocolate doughnuts, chocolate breakfast bars, deviled eggs and even, yes, pizza and pasta left over from our meal the night before.
I can sense the disappointment from my mother -- and nearly all my readers over the age of 60 -- at this point in our story.
Little victories, folks.
As long as I can get something into their bellies, I'm happy -- unless of course, they don't eat. Then there is the verbal fighting that follows, which is always fun to do at 6 a.m.
It happened a few weeks ago. I'm debating (or yelling, based on whom you ask) with my son, Vincent, over breakfast. He says he doesn't want to eat. Then he drops this bomb:
"Why do I have to eat breakfast? Mom says she hates eating breakfast but that she only eats it because you make it for her, and that she really doesn't want it."
That was the last time I made breakfast for my wife, and that's more than a month ago. No more bagels, no more cinnamon-raisin toast, no more pastries, no more breakfast sandwiches. Nothing.
What makes me even more of an idiot is that she knows that I know because I told her I would no longer make her breakfast.
She doesn't care. To her, she's won. Now, how am I supposed to feel like I've won something from that?
Breakfast is the most important meal. She shot that down.
I throw words at her from my two brothers -- one a doctor, another with a master's in health education -- but it doesn't matter. More ideas are shot down. The island in our kitchen looks like the beach scene in the movie "Dunkirk."
There's also a big to-do over vitamins. I am constantly on them to take vitamins each day. I push fruit. I push fruit juice. My sons think fruit rollups are a part of the fruit group.
Most everyone who knows me knows that I'm a big guy, and I always say how sad is it that I am the healthiest person in my household at 6 feet, 285 pounds.
With both of my daughters away at college, I know they are not eating as well as they should be, but my worry and disgust cannot travel the entire way over routes 22 and 422 to Pittsburgh and IUP, respectively. But I digress.
I say my wife is a saint because even though I am like this -- and there is no softening of this story because I am 100 percent like this -- she stays married to me.
I often wonder if I'm this way because of my Italian heritage. If you watch "The Godfather" movies, it's no secret that my people do not take being offended very well.
So, I no longer fight the good fight. I'm too tired.
There's no more verbal sparring at breakfast, just me, eating a healthy bowl of Cracklin' Oat Bran at the dining room table five days a week -- by myself.
Scott Franco, a member of the sports staff, writes a monthly column for the Mirror.