Mawwiage!

Mawwiage is what bwings us togethwa today!

So, New Years Eve, my cousin got married. He's like a little brother to me (okay, not little so much as younger, but you know what I'm saying) and I love him to bits. This got me thinking about marriage and how it appears in most of the books I read versus the movies I watch verses what I actually see in real life.

Now, I should note that my real life views of marriage are a little... off because my mom didn't actually get married until I was sixteen-going-on-seventeen. I watched my aunts, uncles, and grandparents in their married lives, but I didn't live with it everyday like most children. Then again, I spent some time with my grandparents every day so that's actually a little bit of a lie. I just didn't live with it. As far as I could tell, marriage was a lot of arguing and compromise followed by uncomfortable jokes and yelling at kids. With just my mother and I, in the household of no marriage, it was a lot of me and Mom having fun and doing chores when she felt I was being lazy.

I knew that everyone was supposed to want to be married. After all, the Disney movies end with the leading couple getting married with a few distinct exceptions. "Happily Ever After" basically was designed to mean "they got married and had way too many children". I remembering dreaming of the day that my birth father or some prince (or Michael Jackson) would come along and marry my mom so we could have a "normal" family. And then I decided our arrangement was better because a father would make me keep my hair long and not let me dye it... and at least my mom looks silly when she's trying to be intimidating towards boys (the big grin ruins it).

But, I still remember dreaming about love and marriage and having all the stories my Barbie Dolls acted out ending in everyone getting married.

Just one problem.

How many people actually think their lives end with marriage and the prospect of a happy future?

Being a person obsessed with death, I can tell you that most people don't die literally after the wedding day with kids, fully grown forming out of the ether.  It would make life a lot easier if that's what happened which is why it doesn't work that way. Most people die very old, and either surrounded by a bunch of family or utterly alone. It's very sad and really I hate talking about it because everyone looks at me weird when I start up.

I'll emphasize this in a different way.

How does your movie end in your mind? When do the credits role on the movie that you would make out of your life... if your life were a romantic comedy?

If any of you imagined a coffin or a grave, congratulations! Your brain's more twisted than mine!

Personally, I see the credits rolling with me and my chosen partner curled up on a couch either reading books while snuggling or watching some movie together with me doing what I do when I watch a movie... talk and laugh at it the whole time unless I'm genuinely invested. I end it on a small, but peaceful moment for me... which doesn't include marriage, children, or death. You know... those messy things in life that all young people avoid.

Of course, I do have an image in my head of my granddaughter hiking up to the top of this mountain on our property in Kentucky and throwing my cremated remains off while shedding a couple tears. Then, after she's done getting rid of me, she takes out a picture of me and my significant others and smiles.  But that's only if my romantic story is more of a drama... which I highly doubt because my life is never that dramatic... unless I lose my mind even more and we have A Beautiful Mind-style film coming our way.

And that's a post-credits clip anyhow.

Either way, most movies don't include marriage and only the most recent ones cover life after marriage. They're all about making the new couple, but they don't care about what happens in that couple's future. Probably because marriages, beyond being a goal, are kind of boring unless they're dysfunctional.

You watch my mom and step-father long enough and you'll see that. The most exciting they get is if they go on vacation and even then, it's more the weird stuff they see and come across than their actual relationship. Seriously.  They run around at Mom and Pop diners and somehow come across a guy who makes stainless steel sculptures... including George Washington's head.

So... the best story I've read that features happily married couples is... Discworld. If you didn't really see that coming then you need to reread my blog. Sam Vimes and his wife are pretty awesome. One is the Commander of the City Watch and the other breeds dragons (swamp dragons, not noble dragons). They have a kid and everything. It's pretty cool. Even then, the story is more about Commander Vimes trying to balance being a badass with being a husband and father. So... it's like every other action movie cliche out there.

Ever notice that all married men in stories end up being the same way? "Sorry honey, gotta go save the world! Tell Little Billy I'm sorry I missed his game... even though I've never attended any of them ever!"

I'd love to see a story about a happily married, boring couple like my mom and step-father who go on adventures and there's nothing different about them from normal people except that they do that. They can even make fun of the single adventurers looking for love and all that rot. Heck, they can even have a boring background. You know, that couple that meets in a library and hung out together a lot rather than big, eventful dates and it turned out that one was very bookish and the other was doing research on something, but he was more into getting in there and doing the action part of adventures and it all worked out. They even went on a boring honeymoon to Michigan for fishing and caught fish!

Yeah, they adventure (Rory and Amy Pond style, probably), but they're also ordinary people who plan to settle down and have a family. And when the call knows where they live, they defend themselves from the call successfully once they have children. When the children are out of the house or on their own advetures, the couple resume the old life with all the bumps and bruises that would include from being out of shape!

But no one would read that.

Oh well...

Marriage. The end of all stories as we know them!