Boys:
Marriage is symbolized by a ring representing an eternity of love between two people. Usually a man gets down on one knee and looks adoringly at his girlfriend and asks to spend the rest of their lives with them as man and wife the girl tears up and screams and grabs the ring and pushes it on her finger and makes approximately 100 phone calls to announce the engagement before finally settling down and giving the actual, verbal “yes” to her new fiancé. Maybe not all proposals go like that. My parents surely didn’t. Across the dinner table (or lunch?) my dad simply asked my mom is she wanted to get hitched and she said yeah. Thirty five years and going strong! She was 18 at the time and, as you will see, way too old for such a commitment.
I got my first ring from a boy when I was still what some people may deem as a “toddler.” Sure, I could talk, but barely. My legs were still uncoordinated and my fine motor skills were just developed enough to graduate from jumbo Crayolas to the medium size ones. Not quite ready for the big kid skinny crayons, but far too big for the baby ones. They were ‘tard size, just like my I.Q. I still needed helped wiping my own ass on the occasions of dropping a deuce and my wit at the time was as quick as a turtle on quaaludes. To me, numbers and letters were interchangeable. So much so, in fact, that when people asked me how old I was I would often answer with nonsense like, “D”, or “32 sixteen hundred zero negative” or simply, “moooooooo”. I would then beam with pride like I had just solved world hunger and generally whoever was asking me how old I was would react the same way because it was just so adorable how dumb I was. When I answer like that now, people tend to back away slowly or stammer that they have an important outing that they need to be hurrying off too. This happens especially when I change my “moos” to wolf howls. Around this time, I also wore bandaids as a bra, which was my dads solution to my incessant nagging to wanting a big girl bra like my mom. The bandaids didn’t have lace and satin and the confusing straps that I had dreamt of, but the cartoon characters on them made up for the missing classiness. What I am trying to get at, in a long roundabout way, is that I was still a novice at navigating this huge world we live in when I received my first proposal. I still needed help with the most rudimentary concepts and skills. Things like walking without running into walls (that’s a lesson my parents failed at miserably with me, by the way), vomiting in toilets when sick instead of wherever I happen to be, not sucking my thumb and learning boogers were not on the food pyramid. Even though I could not comprehend something as simple as gravity and pets need food or they will die, I knew that I could navigate marriage better than a bloodhound on a coon track.
The ring was perfect. It was any three year olds dream! It was made of the shiniest aluminum that any $.25 machine could produce. Sat atop was the smallest, most perfect little apple. The apple ring, I hear, is rarer than the Hope Diamond. I slipped the ring on my “marriaging” finger (since it was adjustable and would fit ANY FINGER I WANTED!) and mustered up every ounce of coyness my three year old self could and smiled. My newly minted fiancés face brightened and in his excitement, his immature bladder released and he pissed himself.
My first relationship was brutally torn apart when one of our families moved from the other. I often think about what my life would have been like if we had been able to go forth with the wedding. I love my husband that I have now with all my heart, body and soul but I think it’s only natural to go asking yourself the what ifs?
My first fiancé (lets just call him J for the time being) and I could have had an amazing life together. Instead of a five or ten year plan, we could have had a 30 year plan complete with education and sippy cup weaning and naps and training wheel goals. We wouldn’t need a new house with a mortgage; a tree house would be just fine. If we got hungry, hot dogs would sustain us. No cooking necessary. Drinking and bathing with a water hose would be more adventure than homeless chic. Even at a young age, I knew love would keep us alive even though I had no idea the Eagles had already figured that out.
Every once in a while, we might play “ill show you mine if you show me yours” just out of curiosity, nothing sexual. That stuff didn’t start until at least year 19 of our 30 year plan. No more would I have to say things like, “Not tonight honey. I am sorry but I have to go to sleep to dream about the evil overlords that are trying to take over planet earth. My slumber is the only time we can communicate and they are VERY hostile. They need new land mass to build their slumping real estate economy and an overpopulation problem. I have been chosen to be the negotiator and they will kill us all if I don’t stop them. They will stop at nothing honey. NOTHING! We are wasting precious time right now just by having this conversation! Don’t you understand? How are you going to feel when you get to heaven after the aliens blow us up and God asks you why you wouldn’t wait until at least the morning to lay as husband and wife and because of that, you annihilated his favorite planet? Do you have any idea how the conversation would go? Do you want to feel Gods wrath for all of eternity just because you couldn’t keep your blood in the right brain? DO YOU?” My rant would only be interrupted by a muffled snort and heavy breathing and my dialogue would quickly switch to angry “ROLL OVERS AND STOP SNORINGs!” from me. My toddler husband, however, would not only be scared, but be in complete awe that the aliens have chosen me (his WIFE) to communicate with! Then he would sing me a lullaby to speed up the sleep process and guard our treehouse with a Nerf Gun in case my dream negotiations didn’t go as planned.
Foreplay would be just that- foreplay. We would play some games before we played more games. We could start with a game of Go-Fish and when we got tired of that, we could switch to Monopoly . With absolutely no lag time in between, we were ready to play Hide and Seek or Cops and Robbers. The best part is, we could do almost all of these with the lights on and I wouldn’t have to suck in my stomach and try to hide the fact that all my DDs somehow migrated to my butt turning into a bad buttlife implant commercial or that my legs are prickly. There would be no need for sexy costumes- just AWESOME costumes. Who wants to be a French maid when they can be BATMAN?
In-laws would be a breeze! As a child, tact is not expected so you could say whatever you wanted, not under your breath, but out loud! I could say things like, “How come your child is so awesome, but you lack the mentality of a lagoon rat who was dropped on its head as an infant and then ingested lead for the entirety of its life yet still insists on sucking the life out of me slowly and painfully like I am a small mouse that looks delicious?” My verbal skills at the time were lacking the ability to tackle such large words and complex metal poisonings, so I could get away with a simple, “Youre a poop face” and they couldn’t say anything back because I would just be too cute when I said it. My spouse would also think it was funny and would probably chime in with a few insults as well (fart face, turd head, poo licker- anything to do with poo/farts and the facial region basically) and laugh. We would both laugh, until we got sent to time out. This particular skill was helpful in public as well. Why not go up and ask that huge lady how much she weighs? Your husband won’t have to defend you from any pending right hook because he would be curious too and she couldn’t get mad at your innocence. Same goes for people who you cant tell what gender they are. We could go right on up and ask, as a couple with each other for moral support and inquire about which pee pee pose they had to use.
Communication at any age is important, but even more so as a 36 month old because you are still learning what communicating actually is. I read somewhere that reciting the ABCs together not only promotes positive verbal skills, it also helps partners bond. (source: my rough draft from 12 hours ago, page 3, paragraph 2). My husband now wants absolutely nothing to do with bonding by this method and, quite frankly, I think he is more of a math guy and that just never was my thing. A lot of communicating leads to discussions about past relationships. This can be a very difficult subject to breech and no on likes doing it. No one except little couples. As far as I knew, the only other honkas my fiancé had seen were his moms. I wouldn’t ordinarily go around and be ok with all the boobs my husband has seen, but in this case the alternative evened it out. The alternative being starving to death, in this case, for those of you who didn’t catch that.
Childcare would be a breeze. One of us would simply go to AM preschool and the other would take the afternoon course. The bit of overlap would be a nice break for a snack and a nap. Someone would always be there to look after our GI Joes and Barbies and Cabbage Patch Kid dolls. We could never get arrested for accidentally hurting them either when we were punching, kicking, hitting, throwing them off the top bunk, twirling, pulling their hair out, putting them in dangerous rescue missions featuring GI Joe and Barbie, sleeping on, painting, coloring, stabbing, or any other form of child’s play that would come to these toys. The ER bill and the legal aid would cost not a penny. Maybe a time out if the damage was really bad, but it was often worth it.
There would be no arguing about who does more around the house because neither of us would do anything! We would have magic fairies that cooked us dinner and washed our clothes and told us when we needed to bathe because our odor is only aromatic to everyone else but us in our love nest. We would also qualify for tax exemption.
Marrige is a beautiful thing and even though I jest, I take it seriously and love my husband with all my heart. The innocence of childhood is something that I think every couple should try to embrace to some extent. I am not saying go change each others diapers and breastfeed, but enjoy the little things that we all take for granted with our spouses. At the tender age of 3, I realized marriage was inevitable and that I couldn’t wait for it. Now, days away from my 5 year anniversary to a man who was not the one who gave me the apple ring, I wish I had the frame of mind I did when I was three. It would solve a lot of problems married people face if we would just focus on our love for each other instead of the bills and everyday things we get hung up on.
