When I was a little kid, I never had those supposedly common fantasies of my future white-dressed, sun-dappled wedding and my handsome, strong-shouldered groom. I knew that people sometimes got married (my parents were examples), but like catching scabies or becoming an accountant, it just didn't seem like anything that would ever happen to me.
However, the years went by, and I eventually was forced to find full-time employment. For me, this meant laboring in a suburban office with the type of people who were just crazy about getting married. Rarely would a month go by without a new project manager flouncing into the bi-weekly status meeting, brandishing a ghastly new creation from Wedding Day Jewelers.
"Oh my God, Troy proposed!!!!" the other women would shriek. Then the first fifteen minutes of the meeting would be devoted to a detailed description of the proposal. The proposal stories often reminded me of the desperate-for-attention ways boys would ask girls to prom at my Catholic high school. (By the way, that's not "sour grapes"--I was victim to a horrifying prom proposal myself.) Blindfolds, treasure hunts, rings in pizza boxes--nothing was out of bounds.
Whereas before I'd simply thought of marriage in the way I thought of playing softball (I don't really care about joining the team, but you go ahead and do whatever you want), after some time around people who were seriously marriage-minded, I began to feel grossed out by the whole thing. The ostentatious rings, the mass market wedding gowns from David's Bridal, the over-excitement about creating a Target registry--it was the kind of thing that made me want to take a triple dose of Trazadone.
But now here I am, just a few years after my extreme marriage cynicism--married. What happened?
Well, I think it helps that Nick, the person I'm married to, is also not exactly "the marrying kind" either. After dating for awhile, and realizing we got along pretty well, we started talking about whether or not we should go through with it. Despite the fact that most of our friends think marriage is really lame, and thus gave us a really hard time when we told them about our plans, the marriage thing actually seemed to make some sense. For example, we could totally take turns having "real jobs" (to provide the health insurance). There were other reasons too, but in stupid America, that health insurance thing is kind of a big deal.
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