Why don’t you and Margret get married? What is it with you Americans and marriage? You seem to have some kind of confusion that makes a ritual inseparable from the thing it announces. I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you, but if you don’t have a funeral, you’re still dead, OK? No, we’re never going to get married. And we’ve spent the money it would have cost us on a loft conversion.
This is an email that I wrote to Mil Millington of the catchy website TMGAIHAA (Things my girlfriend and I have argued about)…
I love your site. It’s absolutely hilarious! But for me it wasn’t so much the arguments that you wrote about as it was the FAQs for Americans. I about died laughing at your answer to the marriage bit, comparing it to not having a funeral for the dead.
Unfortunately I’m an American and my boyfriend of six years and I get the marriage crap constantly. My whole family (including members I recently met for the first time) insist that I should never say never as if there is some really compelling reason to gather my whole family into one room and spend $10,000+ on a party for which I only get a piece of paper and some crappy dishes in return. Maybe if I thought my family would actually buy the things I would put on a wedding registry I might consider it.
A couple years ago my father asked me when Kurt and I would get married I said that we weren’t planning on it and he said, “But I’d like to have grandchildren someday.” I looked him and asked, “Since when is a piece of paper required in order to become pregnant? Do I have to explain the birds and bees to you?” I told him I plan on having children, they’ll be little bastards, but they’ll still be his grandchildren.
A simple no just didn’t cut it…a couple weeks ago I was back home in Alaska to attend a funeral. I got to see my dad in a suit for the first time in many many years, and it wasn’t the ‘70s pea-green one either. He was actually stunning like a picture I saw of him in his 20s dressed in his military uniform. I made the mistake of pointing out that it had been years since I had seen him dressed like that and how nice he looked. He told me that he had bought the suit for my wedding. REALLY! And when am I getting married? This is news to me!
Well I hope you found this at least mildly amusing, but yes I do intend to keep my day job.
Erica
*** Update April 22, 2005 ***
I got a reply from Mil
>I love your site. It’s absolutely hilarious!
Thank you. It’s very kind of you to say so.
> But for me it wasn’t so
>much the arguments that you wrote about as it was the FAQs for
>Americas.Well, a bow to you for reading the FAQs at all. It shows great mettle.
>I’m unfortunately an American and my boyfriend of six years and I get
>the marriage crap constantly.You could always move to England. Everything else is rubbish here, but no one would dream of suggesting that you ought to get married any more than they’d tell you that you ought to learn to ride a unicycle.
>A couple years ago my father asked me when Kurt and I would get
>married I said that we weren’t planning on it and he said, “But I’d
>like to have grandchildren someday.”Nyuk. Aye, people do have some very odd mindsets. In the UK, 40% of children are born to unmarried parents, though, so it’s not really something that’s noticed. *Single* parents, yes; *unmarried* parents, no.
Your servant,
Mil.