Take my wife, please
Nov. 24th, 2004 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfieldMy senior year of high school, I made a deal with S., my friend and physics lab partner. I was constantly making deals with S., because each of us always had something the other person wanted: S. had vaunted insider "friend" access to high school's reigning mega-babes D.D. and R.P., while I had the answers to that week's lab exercise.
But on one particular occasion, we made a different kind of deal. I can't remember what prompted it; maybe I was having trouble with my girlfriend and she had finally come to realize that her "boyfriend" was actually a "moron." Or perhaps we were just looking ahead into the murky future, and were somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of murk.
We decided that if neither of us were married by the time we were 35, we were going to get hitched to each other. This sort of arrangement is commonplace now, popularized by "My Best Friend's Wedding" and a casual topic of discussion among romantically disaffected twenty-somethings, many of whom have at least two or three fail-safe options should their first pick come off the board. But back then it seemed a novel and ingenious idea. Obviously it was also kind of a silly idea, and I'm still not sure if S. ever took it as seriously as I did. Which is to say, I'm not sure if she remembers that it ever happened.
One can be pretty certain that S. wasn't thinking about it five years later, when she married some dude, thereby nullifying our agreement.
Within those five years, S. and I had drifted apart in typical post-high school fashion, our friendship limited to semi-regular e-mails and an annual what's-going-on-with-you phone call. While I stayed in New York for college, She matriculated at a glitzy university in Tennessee and her parents -- apparently looking for slightly bluer skies -- moved to New Jersey. I was not even invited to the wedding, only becoming aware of the union six months afterwards.
(Incidentally, in those five years she also earned degrees with high honors in Physics, Biochemistry and Biomedical Engineering. I am forced to wonder why, then, I was the one who was always stuck fudging data and writing lab reports for her to copy.)
Anyway, she married this dude. And he was an O.K. dude, from what I could tell the first time I met him. Initially I was distrustful and suspicious of him, partially because of some weird big-brotherly protective nature, but mostly because he was absolutely nothing like me, her first fiancee. He was tall, lean and muscular, cocky and confident, and had eschewed higher education for the life of a forward air controller in the U.S. Air Force. But ultimately, he genuinely seemed to love her, and she was pretty much bananas about him.
A year after their wedding -- February 2000 -- she gave birth to a baby boy. She had also already embarked on a Ph.D program in Biomedical Engineering at her undergraduate alma mater. That same year, the new father shipped off to Kuwait for routine training maneuvers. The word "maneuvers" makes it sound so graceful, like perfoming sign language or lovemaking technique. But what this really means is that they were blowing things up, or alternatively, trying prevent things from being blown up.
News of these life events came to me in sparse, staccato dispatches, since by this time I had moved to D.C., far away from S.'s world. I had my own drama and a swinging bachelor lifestyle. I hadn't spoken to her in months until she sent me an e-mail in May 2001, explaining that her husband had been killed in a horrible "friendly fire" accident.
(Apparently, this was a big news story that somehow eluded me. In the middle of a training exercise in Kuwait in March 2001, some dipshit Navy pilot dropped three 500-pound bombs on a Udairi Range U.S. control center without clearance, killing six servicemen and wounding another 11. The pilot was ultimately discharged without criminal or civil charges, but hopefully he is living an unbearable life of soul-rending guilt. Meanwhile, S. became the target of media attention -- she shied away, though her distraught in-laws appeared on 20/20 -- and well-meaning philanthropists like wacky billionaire H. Ross Perot, who phoned her personally and offered to pay for her son's college education.)
(She declined.)
Of course I rushed to S.'s side, at least figuratively. I called and wrote, I tried to be sympathetic and comforting, and maybe even a little goofy, for comic relief. The truth is, S. is a tough cookie -- a really tough cookie, like one that might have been baked by my father -- so she mostly ended up trying to comfort me. But It was hard to feel anything but horrible for her little boy, who would never remember his father. I think S. appreciated my support, and since then I have made a concerted effort to be a constant (if disembodied) presence in her life.
In between the teeth-gnashing, though, I could not help but have a selfish thought. It was totally inappropriate and completely irrelevant. You know exactly what the thought was: How does this affect our marriage pact?
My first reaction was that the precise language of the pact had been broken -- She had indeed gotten married -- and therefore the contract was null and void. Now, if we were to be reasonable and avoid strict constructionism, we could theorize that if neither of us are married at (not by) the age of 35, the action may be enforceable. Certainly, S. is attractive -- even moreso than when the deal was struck, I would say -- and obviously she is bright, and kind, and funny. Moreover, she actually knows me and likes me, which is not a factor to be overlooked.
But then there is the boy.
I have always been noncommittal on the issue of pitter-patter and little feet. The idea of reproducing is at once frightening and alluring, a delectable challenge and a daunting task.
Truthfully, I often find children to be nothing more than annoyances, relatively useless until they reach the age of ten or so, and then it's just a matter of a few years before they mature into fully sentient beings with drivers licenses and multiple piercings and unfocused rage. On airplanes, they are screaming pests. In strollers, they are bulky obstacles in my path. In movie theaters and family restaurants, they are ticking behavioral time bombs. They absorb money and excrete various gooey substances. Perhaps sensing my scrutiny, small children often appear distrusting of or disinterested in me personally, which does little to endear them to me.
But I am not heartless. I am quite vulnerable to cuteness, and nowhere is cuteness more observable than in the actions of a child. The expressions, the shockingly astute observations, the adorable lack of motor function: these are joyful to witness. Also, I have no doubt that a small child sharing some of my genetic material would be immune to many of my prejudices, especially if I had the opportunity and wherewithal to shape and mold them into an acceptable person through whom I may live vicariously.
But frankly, the most exciting part of having a child, I think, would be naming it. I love naming things. I enjoy naming plants, mix CDs, automobiles, appliances, utensils, sportswear. I have at least three nicknames for every close friend. I would love the opportunity to name a real person. The name would be rich with symbolism and homage, carefully chosen for maximum effectivness across numerous scales: sonorousness, creativity, literal meaning, country of origin, resistance to ridicule, nickname adaptability and ease of spelling. If I could, I would open up a child-naming business. But everyone else thinks they're an expert.
Of course, S.'s boy already has a name. Not to mention someone else's genetic material. So obviously the boy is a cute little deal-breaker.
Nevertheless, in an attempt to embrace the role of old friend and honorary uncle, I recently chaperoned mother and son around town, in S.'s first visit to Our Nation's Capital since our ninth grade Junior Honor Society trip. I was nervous, meeting the little big guy. I wanted to impress him and earn his trust, and perhaps set the stage for a relationship in which I could fill a small part of his need for a strong male figure. Mostly, I wanted desperately to not find him insufferably obnoxious.
On a Sunday afternoon, I met them in the Air and Space Museum. After giving S. a hello-hug, she called her four-year-old over and introduced me. In a misplaced effort to effect some kind of urban cred, I extended my fist, which I expected him to match enthusiastically with his own fist. Instead, he shook my hand in a cursory handshake, said "Hi," and then ran back to pushing a series of meaningless buttons on one of the museum's 25-year old exhibits.
Within minutes, though, we were playing together on the musty old airplanes, and when S. asked if he wanted to try out the flight simulator with mommy or with me, he grabbed my hand led me into the simulator area, leaving mommy behind to hold our jackets and drink boxes. Afterwards, when he had to go potty (and I think that was the first time in my entire life that I used the term "potty'), he grabbed my hand and said he wanted to go into the boys' room.
Thus a fast friendship was born. Although it was not all that fast, given that I ended up carrying him all over the place. It turns out that I am a total sucker when a small child puts his arms up and asks to be carried somewhere, even if the child is at least 40 lbs. and vaguely sticky. I carried him across the mall from museum to museum, and most of the way from the mall to the Lincoln Memorial. When I wasn't carrying him, he was between S. and me, holding each of our hands, strolling down the sidewalk like an actual family. That got to me a little.
What got to me a lot was when we were inside the Lincoln Memorial, and we both got up to the base of the statue. I got on one knee, and he leaned against me, and I took the shiniest penny from my pocket, and I showed him how the guy on the face of the penny was the guy sitting in that big chair. And I showed him the building on the back of the penny, and told him that he was in that building right now. And I told him that Abraham Lincoln was a great man and a great president who was shot and killed by a bad man. And he said that we should leave the penny at the base of the statue, so Abraham Lincoln can pick it up late at night when all the people are gone. He put the penny carefully on the marble base, and turned around and extended his arms to be picked up again. After dinner that night, he made me promise I would come play again the next day.
So the three of us hung out the next day, too, for more museums and an IMAX movie and a trip to the playground, where S. and I took turns pushing the boy on his swing. During lunch, S. asked her son what was his favorite part of the trip to Washington D.C. so far. He answered quickly: meeting me.
That got to me, too.
It was about that time I started getting nervous that he might ask that question, the one you see in TV movies and books featuring talking animals: "Will you be my new daddy?" He never did ask me that question, although he did refer to me as his brother, which is itself pretty cool.
If he had asked me that question, this is what I was going to say:
"I love your mommy, and your mommy loves you more than anything else in the world, so I love you too. Maybe one day your mommy will find someone to live with the both of you, and take care of the both of you, and I hope that she does because you and your mommy deserve to be happy. But if she doesn't, that's okay, because there are a lot of people who love you, like your mommy, and your daddy in heaven, and your grandma and your grandpa and your aunts and your uncles, and me, and I'm always going to be your buddy no matter what."
I wonder if that would have made sense. I guess it doesn't matter now; the following day he and S. visited the zoo, and I was probably bumped out of the top spot in the rankings by a panda or a zebra or something.
It was a powerful few days. Don't get me wrong, the kid was a handful. (Or, more accurately, an armful.) He is loud and crazy and impatient, and comes equipped with Advanced Pouting Action. I don't know how anyone -- especially a single working mom -- can manage it day after day, week after week. Even so, for the first time, being a parent-type person seems like it could be kind of fun.
Maybe we can make that marriage contract stand up after all.
But on one particular occasion, we made a different kind of deal. I can't remember what prompted it; maybe I was having trouble with my girlfriend and she had finally come to realize that her "boyfriend" was actually a "moron." Or perhaps we were just looking ahead into the murky future, and were somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of murk.
We decided that if neither of us were married by the time we were 35, we were going to get hitched to each other. This sort of arrangement is commonplace now, popularized by "My Best Friend's Wedding" and a casual topic of discussion among romantically disaffected twenty-somethings, many of whom have at least two or three fail-safe options should their first pick come off the board. But back then it seemed a novel and ingenious idea. Obviously it was also kind of a silly idea, and I'm still not sure if S. ever took it as seriously as I did. Which is to say, I'm not sure if she remembers that it ever happened.
One can be pretty certain that S. wasn't thinking about it five years later, when she married some dude, thereby nullifying our agreement.
Within those five years, S. and I had drifted apart in typical post-high school fashion, our friendship limited to semi-regular e-mails and an annual what's-going-on-with-you phone call. While I stayed in New York for college, She matriculated at a glitzy university in Tennessee and her parents -- apparently looking for slightly bluer skies -- moved to New Jersey. I was not even invited to the wedding, only becoming aware of the union six months afterwards.
(Incidentally, in those five years she also earned degrees with high honors in Physics, Biochemistry and Biomedical Engineering. I am forced to wonder why, then, I was the one who was always stuck fudging data and writing lab reports for her to copy.)
Anyway, she married this dude. And he was an O.K. dude, from what I could tell the first time I met him. Initially I was distrustful and suspicious of him, partially because of some weird big-brotherly protective nature, but mostly because he was absolutely nothing like me, her first fiancee. He was tall, lean and muscular, cocky and confident, and had eschewed higher education for the life of a forward air controller in the U.S. Air Force. But ultimately, he genuinely seemed to love her, and she was pretty much bananas about him.
A year after their wedding -- February 2000 -- she gave birth to a baby boy. She had also already embarked on a Ph.D program in Biomedical Engineering at her undergraduate alma mater. That same year, the new father shipped off to Kuwait for routine training maneuvers. The word "maneuvers" makes it sound so graceful, like perfoming sign language or lovemaking technique. But what this really means is that they were blowing things up, or alternatively, trying prevent things from being blown up.
News of these life events came to me in sparse, staccato dispatches, since by this time I had moved to D.C., far away from S.'s world. I had my own drama and a swinging bachelor lifestyle. I hadn't spoken to her in months until she sent me an e-mail in May 2001, explaining that her husband had been killed in a horrible "friendly fire" accident.
(Apparently, this was a big news story that somehow eluded me. In the middle of a training exercise in Kuwait in March 2001, some dipshit Navy pilot dropped three 500-pound bombs on a Udairi Range U.S. control center without clearance, killing six servicemen and wounding another 11. The pilot was ultimately discharged without criminal or civil charges, but hopefully he is living an unbearable life of soul-rending guilt. Meanwhile, S. became the target of media attention -- she shied away, though her distraught in-laws appeared on 20/20 -- and well-meaning philanthropists like wacky billionaire H. Ross Perot, who phoned her personally and offered to pay for her son's college education.)
(She declined.)
Of course I rushed to S.'s side, at least figuratively. I called and wrote, I tried to be sympathetic and comforting, and maybe even a little goofy, for comic relief. The truth is, S. is a tough cookie -- a really tough cookie, like one that might have been baked by my father -- so she mostly ended up trying to comfort me. But It was hard to feel anything but horrible for her little boy, who would never remember his father. I think S. appreciated my support, and since then I have made a concerted effort to be a constant (if disembodied) presence in her life.
In between the teeth-gnashing, though, I could not help but have a selfish thought. It was totally inappropriate and completely irrelevant. You know exactly what the thought was: How does this affect our marriage pact?
My first reaction was that the precise language of the pact had been broken -- She had indeed gotten married -- and therefore the contract was null and void. Now, if we were to be reasonable and avoid strict constructionism, we could theorize that if neither of us are married at (not by) the age of 35, the action may be enforceable. Certainly, S. is attractive -- even moreso than when the deal was struck, I would say -- and obviously she is bright, and kind, and funny. Moreover, she actually knows me and likes me, which is not a factor to be overlooked.
But then there is the boy.
I have always been noncommittal on the issue of pitter-patter and little feet. The idea of reproducing is at once frightening and alluring, a delectable challenge and a daunting task.
Truthfully, I often find children to be nothing more than annoyances, relatively useless until they reach the age of ten or so, and then it's just a matter of a few years before they mature into fully sentient beings with drivers licenses and multiple piercings and unfocused rage. On airplanes, they are screaming pests. In strollers, they are bulky obstacles in my path. In movie theaters and family restaurants, they are ticking behavioral time bombs. They absorb money and excrete various gooey substances. Perhaps sensing my scrutiny, small children often appear distrusting of or disinterested in me personally, which does little to endear them to me.
But I am not heartless. I am quite vulnerable to cuteness, and nowhere is cuteness more observable than in the actions of a child. The expressions, the shockingly astute observations, the adorable lack of motor function: these are joyful to witness. Also, I have no doubt that a small child sharing some of my genetic material would be immune to many of my prejudices, especially if I had the opportunity and wherewithal to shape and mold them into an acceptable person through whom I may live vicariously.
But frankly, the most exciting part of having a child, I think, would be naming it. I love naming things. I enjoy naming plants, mix CDs, automobiles, appliances, utensils, sportswear. I have at least three nicknames for every close friend. I would love the opportunity to name a real person. The name would be rich with symbolism and homage, carefully chosen for maximum effectivness across numerous scales: sonorousness, creativity, literal meaning, country of origin, resistance to ridicule, nickname adaptability and ease of spelling. If I could, I would open up a child-naming business. But everyone else thinks they're an expert.
Of course, S.'s boy already has a name. Not to mention someone else's genetic material. So obviously the boy is a cute little deal-breaker.
Nevertheless, in an attempt to embrace the role of old friend and honorary uncle, I recently chaperoned mother and son around town, in S.'s first visit to Our Nation's Capital since our ninth grade Junior Honor Society trip. I was nervous, meeting the little big guy. I wanted to impress him and earn his trust, and perhaps set the stage for a relationship in which I could fill a small part of his need for a strong male figure. Mostly, I wanted desperately to not find him insufferably obnoxious.
On a Sunday afternoon, I met them in the Air and Space Museum. After giving S. a hello-hug, she called her four-year-old over and introduced me. In a misplaced effort to effect some kind of urban cred, I extended my fist, which I expected him to match enthusiastically with his own fist. Instead, he shook my hand in a cursory handshake, said "Hi," and then ran back to pushing a series of meaningless buttons on one of the museum's 25-year old exhibits.
Within minutes, though, we were playing together on the musty old airplanes, and when S. asked if he wanted to try out the flight simulator with mommy or with me, he grabbed my hand led me into the simulator area, leaving mommy behind to hold our jackets and drink boxes. Afterwards, when he had to go potty (and I think that was the first time in my entire life that I used the term "potty'), he grabbed my hand and said he wanted to go into the boys' room.
Thus a fast friendship was born. Although it was not all that fast, given that I ended up carrying him all over the place. It turns out that I am a total sucker when a small child puts his arms up and asks to be carried somewhere, even if the child is at least 40 lbs. and vaguely sticky. I carried him across the mall from museum to museum, and most of the way from the mall to the Lincoln Memorial. When I wasn't carrying him, he was between S. and me, holding each of our hands, strolling down the sidewalk like an actual family. That got to me a little.
What got to me a lot was when we were inside the Lincoln Memorial, and we both got up to the base of the statue. I got on one knee, and he leaned against me, and I took the shiniest penny from my pocket, and I showed him how the guy on the face of the penny was the guy sitting in that big chair. And I showed him the building on the back of the penny, and told him that he was in that building right now. And I told him that Abraham Lincoln was a great man and a great president who was shot and killed by a bad man. And he said that we should leave the penny at the base of the statue, so Abraham Lincoln can pick it up late at night when all the people are gone. He put the penny carefully on the marble base, and turned around and extended his arms to be picked up again. After dinner that night, he made me promise I would come play again the next day.
So the three of us hung out the next day, too, for more museums and an IMAX movie and a trip to the playground, where S. and I took turns pushing the boy on his swing. During lunch, S. asked her son what was his favorite part of the trip to Washington D.C. so far. He answered quickly: meeting me.
That got to me, too.
It was about that time I started getting nervous that he might ask that question, the one you see in TV movies and books featuring talking animals: "Will you be my new daddy?" He never did ask me that question, although he did refer to me as his brother, which is itself pretty cool.
If he had asked me that question, this is what I was going to say:
"I love your mommy, and your mommy loves you more than anything else in the world, so I love you too. Maybe one day your mommy will find someone to live with the both of you, and take care of the both of you, and I hope that she does because you and your mommy deserve to be happy. But if she doesn't, that's okay, because there are a lot of people who love you, like your mommy, and your daddy in heaven, and your grandma and your grandpa and your aunts and your uncles, and me, and I'm always going to be your buddy no matter what."
I wonder if that would have made sense. I guess it doesn't matter now; the following day he and S. visited the zoo, and I was probably bumped out of the top spot in the rankings by a panda or a zebra or something.
It was a powerful few days. Don't get me wrong, the kid was a handful. (Or, more accurately, an armful.) He is loud and crazy and impatient, and comes equipped with Advanced Pouting Action. I don't know how anyone -- especially a single working mom -- can manage it day after day, week after week. Even so, for the first time, being a parent-type person seems like it could be kind of fun.
Maybe we can make that marriage contract stand up after all.
