Every night, my girlfriend wakes me up to tell the exact same joke.

Before i start, i feel like i should let something very clear: I absolutely love Ellen. We've been living together for about three years now, but have known each other our whole lives. In fact, we were childhood friends - and i know this may sound like a fairy tale to some people, but it truly felt like we were always destined to be together. Even after graduation, when we started dating other people, it only felt truly right when we were with each other. And for three years now, Ellen is truly the love of my life. <br><br>Because of this, i have always been more than happy to indulge her in her quirky little obsessions. Like how she can only fall asleep if the TV is playing on the lowest volume possible, or how she always needs to break up her breakfast into six parts, splitting her toast into three stacks of two slices each, and then consuming the three stacks in a clockwise fashion, always starting from the stack closest to her. <br><br>I'm not sure how many of you will have heard of this one, but the most obscure joke i could find on the web that came close to this goes something like:<br><br>"I can understand how someone can hate breakfast. The three meals a day are supposed to be simple and easy - its what makes us humans, after all. But what the hell kind of sadistic freak would call *breakfast*, *lunch* and *dinner* breakfast, when there are clearly six meals between them? Breakfast, First Snack, Second Breakfast, Third Snack, Early Dinner, and Late Dinner."<br><br>That's what she used to say, almost verbatim, whenever we were kids and had sleepovers at my place. Though at the time, at least, it was more of a quick one liner. As we got older, the 'joke' got longer, and more than once my parents caught on to her antics. <br><br>As we got older, the jokes got longer, and the way she would wake me up to tell them got more erratic. <br><br>Some nights it was as simple as a quick prod on my forehead, with a soft voice in my ear whispering, "I can understand how someone can hate breakfast...". Other nights, i would wake up to see her sitting in the chair next to the window, just staring at the wall as i ruffled my hair in confusion. <br><br>"You okay, babe?" I'd ask her, groggily. "What's up?"<br><br>"I can understand how someone can hate breakfast..." she'd say, and i'd sink back into the mattress, knowing that at the end of the day, it didn't matter. <br><br>I loved her more for it. <br><br>And besides - it was such a small thing, and never enough to keep me awake at night. I'd fall back to sleep as soon as she'd finished the joke in full, and never remember it by the time morning rolled around.