Monday, July 9, 2007

Mawage is What Bwings Us Togevar

Ryan and I have been married for 11 years now, which I recognize is not anywhere near world-champion marriage length, but it's a start. (Wait, picture with me for a second what kind of competition would make up the World Championship of Marriage: A bunch of 80-year-olds jumping hurdles? Old men throwing their wives' fine china in the Discus? Maybe some figure skating?)

Anyhow, we haven't been married too long that we've forgotten what it was like to be young, stupid, and in love, back when he was the center of my universe and I couldn't bear to be apart from him for more than 10 minutes, when we could talk for hours and never be interrupted by anyone other than a waitress, because we could go out to dinner as often as we wanted and not have to tell anyone that, no, you can NOT eat the french fry that fell on the floor, and PLEASE would you stop crawling under the table and sit in your seat, and FOR CRYING OUT LOUD leave the salt shaker alone!! And NO you cannot have dessert, we need to get out of here five minutes ago!!

Well, if you know of anyone who is still under the crazy delusion that marriage is just a continuation of the head-over-heels romance that led to the altar, we've found the perfect book. On a date on Friday night, courtesy of my brother who we love, Ryan and I wandered into Deseret Book in the mall. Browsing in the Family and Parenting section, looking for the book that is going to turn my kids into good eaters, good readers, good friends with each other, and isn't going to make me feel guilty at the same time, Ryan picked up a gem of a gift book called "I Marry You Because..."

White and gold, with a picture of a cherub on the front and full of Victorian images throughout, this book is a tribute to all the reasons that two people get married. Ryan started reading some out loud to me in the bookstore - and we both burst out laughing. They are the cheesiest, sappiest, most ridiculous sayings ever written down. For example:

I marry you because the love I give you is second hand: I feel it first.
I marry you because we believe in meeting life's challenges heart-on.
I marry you because God loves our love.

Barf-a-rama! Oh my gosh, the worst is that I can remember being so smitten that these sayings would have melted my already gooey heart. Now they are nothing but a huge joke in the face of what married life is really like, once you get far enough into it. As Ryan and I read these sayings in Deseret Book, we knew there was only one thing we could do with a book like this - buy it and mock it.

"I marry you because I can make you laugh." Oh yeah? I can make my dad laugh, should I marry him too?
"I marry you because familiarity breeds consent." Wait, what? Familiarity breeds contempt, doesn't it?
"I marry you because in you I am complete." Nice try, but that's been done before, by Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger in the movie "Jerry Maquire". And it was catchier the way they said it.

So I decided that, to justify buying such a ridiculous book and actually rewarding it's author with our hard-earned $7.95, I needed to turn this into blog-fodder. I'm going to start including a Mock of the Day to each post, for as long as I think they are funny. The "I Marry you because" statement is quoted directly from the book. The "I Stay Married to you because" statement is my own little reality check.

Mock of the Day

I marry you because of what I know and what I want to find out.
I stay married to you because of the tax break.

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