With divorce rates fast approaching 100%, there are lawyers cashing in, houses for sale and cougars on the prowl. Okay, not every marriage ends in divorce but that how it seems. Weddings end in divorce more often than ‘till death do us part’; the vows should be rewritten to read ‘in sickness and in health, and in bankruptcy and premature ejaculation,
and in cute assistants with short skirts and in getting drunk and peeing with the toilet lid down and in hitting on your wife’s sister and in trips to the mall during the Giants game and in dents in the car in a crowded parking lot and in hot flashes and broken condoms, until debt do us part.’
Bob Dole affectionately called the World War II generation the greatest generation; this is also the generation that put Japanese citizens in internment camps and carried out the Dresden firebombing. They also voted in Kennedy with his family values and Nixon with his honesty. How could right decisions be so wrong long term? The braided rat tail haircut I chose in 1990, wouldn't work for me today. That goes double for the warehouse job I had in high school. The florescent red parachute pants and the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with the velour bench seat and the rally wheels were cool all at the time. It’s a good thing most of those pictures didn’t survive and the rest were highly flammable.
This brings me to relationships. When you’re in your twenties and choosing a mate, your criteria is something like ‘well she’s cute, she’s fun, she keeps me entertained behind closed doors and she doesn’t embarrass me in public.' I put more thought into my favorite beer than in choosing the proper life partner. Back then, I don’t remember wondering if my girlfriend would make a good mother or if she was good with money or would she kill me if I peed on the toilet seeat for the 459th day in a row or I hit on her best friend while drunk. In my defense, it was a case of mistaken identity; they really do look alike. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
If I knew at twenty what I know now, I probably would have bought Microsoft stock on the way up and not have tried to outrun those three police cars. Seriously, I would have done things pretty much the same. There are a few little things I would have changed. For starters, I would have spent an entire weekend picking out my couch. My ass would have touched every cushion in a five county radius. Knowing that in most of my happy times I’d be curled up with her on it and the times we’re fighting I'd be curled up alone on it sucking my thumb; it’s the one piece of furniture I would have put any thought into. The couch is my sanctuary; there are no ruffles and no cold feet on my legs or elbows in my back.
I would have also established “guy’s night” as a regular event rather than something that occurs less frequently than a Red Sox World Series victory. And I wouldn’t have told her what occurs on guy’s night. And for any women who are wondering, on guy’s night there is no drinking or checking out other girls. We pretty much meet at the diner and discuss family values, the Bible and what kind pillows look best on the bed.
If I had known I’d be the ‘check out the noise at 3 am guy’, I would have invested in a quality Louisville Slugger rather than using a rolled up Cosmo magazine and wearing fuzzy pink bunny slippers with a Victoria’s Secret silk bathrobe that accentuates my bust line. Any guy who has every stepped on a Matchbox car while barefoot in the dark will wear whatever is available when his wife or girlfriend hears an imaginary noise.
All women hear these noises and every guy I know has searched their house through one bloodshot eye. These searches never amount to anything. I think the noise thing is a test for us men. Our woman is on the phone the next morning with her mother saying “It happened last night. I woke him out of a dead sleep and told him to go downstairs to check out a sound I made up and he actually did it. And I put the Matchbox cars on stairs like you told me."
If men were any smarter, we might realize this; but at 3 am, smart needs another four hours of sleep. As dumb as we are, we still manage to get women. Although I do love women, sometimes I prefer the companionship of a dog. A dog has never run up my credit card and they don’t care how late I come home. In fact, the later I arrive, the happier my dog is to see me. And I’ve never come home early to find my dog in bed with my best friend.
The institution of marriage was an invention to help perpetuate the species we call human and some religions required a man to marry his brother’s wife should he die. Maybe that’s the big turn off; the institution of marriage makes you feel like you need to be institutionalized. People used to get married to procreate; now they get married so they don’t plant too many seeds in the garden. In the Bible, Abraham lived to be 160 years old and had about 1000 children. Today, if one gets married and stays married the norm is somewhere around two kids.
I have some gay friends who would like to get married with their same sex partners
and straight friends would don’t even want to talk about marriage. Gay people want what we have even though we’re done with it. Platypus was right when he said “we don’t want what we’ve always had and want what we can’t have and that’s why we should want to not have for anything.” I for two believe that gay people should have to get married. I’m sick and tired of their freewheeling lifestyle. They should have to pick one person and be with just that person for all of eternity.
Leonardo (no last name necessary) said “Marriage is like putting your hand in a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out and eel.” Rita Rudner said about marriage “It’s so great to find that one special person to annoy for the rest of your life.” A spouse is a person who will support you through all of the hard times she created. I’d love to continue our conversation but my girlfriend is moving in next week and I gotta buy a bat, some slippers and go couch shopping.
a decidedly myopic rehashing of the not so obvious... Seinfeld should have thought of it
