For a guy who didn't end up living in his parents' basement or working at a gas station, I did surprisingly poorly in high school.

Actually, I can say quite confidently that there are people who work at gas stations and live in their parents' basements who did better than I did in school. As a result, the onset of summer always reminds me of summer school.

I think the best way to turn a kid around, academically and socially, is to have him spend his summer in an intolerably hot classroom with a concentration of the dumbest, most disruptive, most violent kids your city has to offer. At the helm of all this, place a growling teacher with a penchant for saying terribly inappropriate things about Asians, and you've got the recipe for success!

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No, wait, I wrote that wrong; replace "best way" with "worst way." Replace "recipe for success" with "recipe for decades of emotional scarring."

Those summers were filled with frustration and regret over the things I should have and could have done, mixed with hope over the promises I made to myself to not be in the same place the next year. I did eventually go to college -- because none of the gas stations were hiring and my parents wanted to turn my room into a study -- but that strange, melancholy sense of excitement always comes back to me on warm summer mornings.

If I think about things for too long, I can work myself into a miserable state of ineffable self-pity. Fortunately, this time of year also marks one of the best things to ever happen to me: getting married.

As you read this, my wife and I are in South Dakota (the sexier of the Dakotas), celebrating five years of marriage. Every year I write a column about how much I love my wife, and every year that statement becomes more true. And every year, I wonder just a little more if my marriage wasn't some sort of fortunate divine clerical mistake.

I can picture myself standing at the gates of heaven, only to discover that the life I lived was not supposed to be mine:
SAINT PETER: "OK, name?"
ME: "Chris Cope."
PETE: "Ah, yes. Terribly sorry about the crocodiles."
ME: "Huh? What crocodiles?"
PETE: "The crocodiles that ate you. It says here that you were supposed to have been eaten by crocs during an ill-fated trip to Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo."
ME: "No. That's not me."
PETE: "It says here that you were. And that you were married to Doris 'Brick Face' Stinklemeyer. And ..."
ME: "My wife's name is Rachel."
PETE: "What?! Ugh. This is all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I'll bet that intern, Midgley, is to blame for this. He can't do anything right."

On one particular sweltering summer school day before I so thoroughly contempleted my afterlife, I walked the 4 miles from John F. Kennedy High School to my house, clicked on the television and collapsed on my bed. I found myself watching an infomercial in which John Tesh credited the subject of the infomercial with saving his marriage. Tesh and his very blond wife sat in front of palm trees and used every marriage cliche in the book: "Marriage is a business;" "Marriage is hard work;" "There's no 'FUN' in marriage."

OK, I made that last one up, but they might as well have said it. I remember thinking to myself that marriage sounded awful.

As it turns out, John Tesh was full of it. If marriage is like anything, perhaps it is a bit like a summer day without school: some days are more exciting than others but they are always better than work; I spend my time chasing a girl; and I want every moment of it to last forever.

My wife and I are still only in that summer morning of our lives -- there is a lot to look forward to, and nothing to regret.

Chris Cope is married, with no children. His column appears every other Tuesday.