Marriage: The Good, The Bad, The Compromises

I found this charming collection of advice from kids about marriage and I had to share it as we enter bridal season; forewarned is forearmed.

The Question: What do you think about getting married? (written by kids)

You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dip coming.
-- Alan, age 10 (spoken like a true man’s man)

No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you're stuck with.
-- Kristen, age 10

You can tell if two people are married if they seem to be yelling at the same kids.
-- Derrick, age 8

What do my Mom and Dad have in common? Um, both don't want any more kids.
-- Lori, age 8

Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.
-- Lynnette, age 8 (isn't she a treasure)

On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.
-- Martin, age 10 (great strategy kid, truth is over rated)

If your date is going bad, I would run home and play dead. The next day I would call the newspapers and make sure they wrote about me in all the dead columns.
-- Craig, age 9 (what happened to Hop on the bus, Gus?)

When is it okay to kiss someone? Oh that’s easy, when they're rich.
-- Pam, age 7 (a girl after my own heart)

The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It's the right thing to do.
-- Howard, age 8 (so, Republican are BORN, not made after all)

It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys have to get married because they need someone to clean up after them.
-- Anita, age 9 (from the mouths of babes)

The important thing to do if you got married, is to tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a dump truck.
-- Ricky, age 10
 
 The kids aren’t so far off the mark. If you’re getting married for the first time this Spring, here’s some things they don’t tell you in the bridal magazines.

“The Romance Stops Here”, should be a sticker on the back of the marriage license. Men engage romantic gestures for only three purposes in life: 1. to get you in the sack 2. to get out of trouble 3. on Valentine’s Day, but only if you remind them, and only because they have to, otherwise they view Valentine’s Day as a costly nuisance.

Whatever household chores they were able to perform pre-nuptuals, they lose the ability to perform post-nuptuals. Before marriage, men were able to live independently. They could cook, clean, do laundry, and even remember to take out the garbage. Within six months of marriage, they lose the ability to do any of these things. Something in way the wedding band constricts their finger cuts off blood flow to the part of their brain that knew how to do chores. They become eight year old boys again. Suddenly they can’t do anything but watch TV. It happened to all my friends husbands too. Suddenly, we, the liberated women of the 70’s, were doing all the work our unliberated mothers of the 50’s did, plus we got to work full time jobs. Just once, it would have been nice to come home to a nice dinner already made - take out doesn't count - but in 18 years, it never happened to me. I don’t know of any women, unless married to a chef, who ever came home to a home made dinner.

Fence Mending - it’s all on you. Prior to marriage, there is a chance he’ll accept 10, maybe 20%, of the blame for something he did. After marriage, HA! Once married, it’s either your fault, or we don’t discuss it. And regardless of whose fault anything is, it is you, the wife, who must be the first one to make the peace. All fence mending is done by you, period. Men can’t admit they are wrong, or apologize because it burns a hole in their tongue, otherwise, I’m sure they’d be happy to admit error for that prenuptial 10% of the time.

Lastly, your handbag. Once for your personal items, it must now carry his wallet, sunglasses, reading glasses, important papers, cigarettes and lighter, keys, garage remote and cell phone. Don’t believe me? Look at a single woman’s purse, look at a married woman’s purse. I rest my case.

 

Polygamy, the game the whole family can play!

The Old Testament is full of polygamy, but it worked then because so many women died in childbirth, having a back-up wife made sense. I believe that’s the reason Mormonism thrived on the American Frontier where one in four women died in childbirth. Having a back-up wife, or two, could literally make the difference in survival. Islam allows a man four wives, so long as he can support each one equally, which creates a self leveling system. The four wife limit also created a stop to a man marrying throughout his life to feed his lecherous ego. I recall reading that Brigham Young, the leader of the Mormon Church in the west, had seventy three wives, the youngest being 13 years old when he married her in his seventies. That’s not a survival marriage, that’s legal rape.

As I watch the events unfold in Texas, all I can think is what great system this is for a man. You get to acquire new sex partners throughout your life - with your church’s blessing - and none of them are allowed to complain. If I were a man and there was a religion where women were raised to be silent and compliant and I could have as many as I wanted, I’d sign up so damn fast...

The men made all the rules and they make all the decisions. The women aren’t allowed to wear make-up or cut their hair, and they all have to wear the prairie dresses and they are all indoctrinated that to disobey in any way will cost them their immortal souls. Wow! I’ve got to hand it to Jeff's, he has managed to acquire complete control over hundreds of people who think he talks to God. Amazing.

Clearly, a woman has to be born into this cult. I don’t think any of us who had a brain could check it at the gate before joining this cult.

Penny, age 30 (who joined the cult a year ago): “George, are you gonna mow the lawn today?”
George, age 48: :”Not today, sweetcakes, I’ve got to get Lucy pregnant, God’s commandments come first.”
Penny: “Not Lucy, she’s your daughter, remember? I think you’re supposed to plow Jennifer today. But how long can that take? You can still get the lawn done.”
George: “Have one of the boys do it.”
Penny: “Can’t, they’re at the Temple studying Polygamy 101: Don’t Bother With Names, Call Them All Sweetcakes.”
George: “Well, you do it then and stop bothering me. I command you to mow the lawn and forbid you to bring it up again.”
Penny: “Okay, then you’ll need to order someone else to make spaghetti for 37 kids for dinner.”
George: “Oh, were you on for dinner tonight?”
Penny: “Not anymore, I’ll be doing something I can’t mention.”
George: “37? Are we up to 37 kids now? How did that happen?”
Penny: “Well, I could give you a clue. But instead, how about you just count your total kids once a week. You know how many chickens you have, right?”
George: “142.”
Penny: “I’m not sure where it’s written in the Bible, but I bet a man is supposed to keep track of his children at least as well as his livestock. Something like, “Counteth not thy children before they hatch.””
George: “I know being the leader of this family looks like fun and games to you, but I work hard for all my twenty one wives, you know.”
Penny: “Twenty wives, you said you married me to replace Constance.”
George: “Constance? Where did Constance go?”
Penny: “She cheated on you with Bill. She’s his seventeenth wife now.”
George: “Well that makes us even, I stole Susan and Patrice from him.”
Penny: “Constance left her kids, seven kids.”
George: “Left me with seven kids? I’ll have her shunned for that!”
Penny: “They’re your kids too, George, aren’t they?”
George: “Who knows? I’m so busy trying to keep everybody pregnant, if one slips by me, how am I gonna know?”
Penny: “On the outside, they’d say, “it’s tough out here for a pimp.”

Those Annoying TV Pop-up Ads!

“Night of the Hurdling Curdling Death Tues. Apr 6 8 PM”

It started about ten years ago. TNT began placing its logo in the lower right hand corner of the TV. A sheer, onion skin logo. I remember being annoyed when I first saw it. It distracted me from the program. But I let it slide, figuring that Ted Turner needed to label things that are his, the same way Trump has to label everything that belongs to him.

Soon after, other networks decided to put onion skin labels in the corner too. We all got used to it and trained our eyes not to notice them.

Then some network got the idea of announcing the title of the program you were watching on onions skins in the left lower corner. “You are watching Night of the Living Dead on the SciFi Channel”. I figured that was to benefit people who fell into three categories: 1. People who were distracted by someone for a moment and turned back to the TV having completely lost track of what show they were watching. 2. People who were walking behind the couch while someone else channel surfed and the show title would cause them to say, “Wait, I wanna see that a minute.” 3. People who had fallen asleep in front of the TV and upon waking would need to know immediately what program they were missing.

The next phase of the onion skin pop-up labeling was to advertise what the next show would be. Prior to this, the onion skin labels were just identifying the channel and the show, now they were advertising the next show before I was through watching this one. It wasn’t enough that I had to mute through eight minutes of commercials every six minutes, now they were cheating by adding thin strips of advertising for Flavor of Love right over kids’ face who was crying at the height of a dramatic scene.

Then, another Ad Exec thought, well hell, why just advertise the next show? Let’s advertise upcoming shows! I have a clear memory of watching a Christmas special on USA and while the chorus was singing, there was a strip ad for the movie “Race with the Devil at 8 PM Next Tuesday”. I really don’t want to see ads for satanic movies in the middle of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’. It just proves that the strip ads appear according to a time schedule without regard to how incongruent they may be to the program they are defacing.

Recently, I have seen ads for programs that are on at the same time as the one I’m watching. “Now Showing: Gomez vs. Alverez on HBO Boxing”. This confuses me. Do they want me to stay with the show I’m watching or turn to another one on a different channel - is it better than what I’m watching now? Do they want me to turn back to this channel for the next show on this channel, or should I stay with the other channel?

Apparently people are not paying enough attention to the onion skin ads, so now they have to animate them.

Case in point. This past weekend I was watching a 1940’s movie with Barbara Stanwyck and John Payne. She’s very short. He was holding her by the shoulders, her eyes were smoldering in that film noir way and he began to lean in for the big kiss, when a small airplane shot out from her ear and circled the screen, heading towards the bottom left corner where the image of King Kong on the Empire State building had appeared. The plane zoomed him and he batted it away as another plane came from behind her head, now kissing John Payne, and flew towards King Kong with little machine guns flares shooting at him all the way. The strip ad told me King Kong was showing on that channel at 9 PM, obviously something I needed to know at exactly that moment.

If TV execs are trying to get us to watch more of their programming, they need to throttle back on these ever increasing pop-up ads. I never watch TNT, USA or BET anymore because they load their programs with so much pop-up advertising, it really ruins your ability to get lost in the story, which is why you turned it on in the first place.

The Importance of Getting Ahead in Life

Apr 2, 2008 LONDON (Reuters) - Children playing on a Scottish beach discovered a woman's severed head in a plastic bag, police said on Tuesday.

Any Beach, Shelter Island; two single Moms sitting on towels among many other single Moms on towels with kids swarming all around.

Mom 1: “My kids love the beach. They love making treasure maps and digging for treasure.”
Mom 2: “I know what you mean. My kids are alway making castles and digging up weird stuff. I think half my baking tools and pans are scattered all over this beach.”
Mom 1: “Me too. Somewhere on this beach is my best spring loaded cake pan, it made the best castle foundation you know. I lost my spring pan, but last year the kids found me a really nice blue silicone ladle with a matching baking sheet. Obviously part of a set.”
Mom 2: “Somebody’s missing that.”
Mom 1: “I know. I always worry somebody will be over for a visit and recognize something in my kitchen that should be in theirs.”
Mom 2: “That’s every Mom on Shelter Island.”
Mom 1: “Look at the kids, they’re all congregating. Somebody found something.”
Mom 2: “Don’t get up, they’ll drag it over here in a minute. Last week my kids found a conch filled with beach glass and hermit crabs. We had to take it home and put it in the sink so the hermit crabs could have water.”
Mom 1: “They can’t live in fresh water.”
Mom 2: “The kids don’t know that. If I told them that, then I’d have to bring home a bucket of salt water along with everything else. The hermit crabs lived a few hours and by then the kids had lost all interest in them, I rinsed off the beach glass and shells and put them in yet another jar somewhere in the house.”
Mom 1: “I think I have five jars of “beach treasures” in my house. Off-island people always think we’re nuts. We got jars of sand with glass and parts of crabs and shells and whatever else was on the beach that day.”
Mom 2: “Your kids are putting something in your car.”
Mom 1: “It’s the big find of the day I’m sure.”
Mom 2: “Here they come, get the sandwiches out.”
Kid 1 : “I saw it first. I said it’s real, but Jacob thinks it’s plastic. It’s real isn’t it Mom?”
Mom 1: “Eat your sandwich with your back to the wind, hunny, so the sand doesn’t blow on it. I’m sure it’s real. We’ll rinse it off at home and put it in the living room.”
Kid 2 : “It’s not real. But maybe you could make a lamp with it. My aunt made a lamp with a plastic pumpkin.”
Mom 2: “Okay, give me your juicy juice boxes. Let’s keep the trash under control. You guys can have another hour, then we’re going home.”
Kid 1 : “What if we find more of it?”
Mom 1: “Well, if it’s icky, don’t touch it.”
Kid 1: “But if it’s not icky, we can take it home too?”
Mom 1: “Yea, sure.”
Mom 2: “Gotta monitor that “ick” factor. My kids tried to bring home a dead chipmunk they found on the beach once.”
Mom 1: “Eeeeew. (calls to her child) It’s not a dead squirrel or something, the thing in the car?”
Kid 1 : “No Ma, not a squirrel. You wanna see it?”
Mom 1 : “Yea. You better bring it here.”
Kid 1 brings the package.
Mom 2: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!”
Mom 1: “Call 911! Put that down now!”
Mom 2: “Oh my gawd... is it someone we know?”
Mom 1: “Just call 911. KIDS! Get in the car, NOW!”
Kid 1: “But you said we could look for more of the lady if it wasn’t too icky. You said we could stay another hour.”