Wait!!! Before you dismiss this as just another ‘marriage/man-woman-relationships’ blog post, just hold on! Just give me ten minutes and read on… fifteen for dyslexics and slow readers. That’s not hate speech: dyslexics are known to be smarter than the average guy, and we all know what keen people slow readers are. If anything, those are the ones that remember my literary stories word for word. I digress.
Anyways, we have heard it all, haven’t we? He who finds a wife, finds a good thing. A good marriage is like a good business: boring on the outside. It’s true, marriage indeed does change people; my elder brother is a better man since his nuptials. The change was slow and subtle, but it was there. His wife, Mrs. M, makes my brother so much more palatable. They don’t compliment each other; they complement each other. And now fatherhood has literally made him a sweet heart, but that’s a story for another day.
It is absolutely-without-a-doubt true that every woman dreams about her wedding day ever since she was a little girl. We thrive on attention and adoration. It’s the fodder that ruminates in the stomach that is our lives, and like rabbits eat their own poop, we find ways of reenacting scenarios and being nonchalant divas, always making our men ooh and aah at us for one reason or the other. We should be commended for our recycling prowess really- thrifty, if nothing else. Only, during our wedding season, we get the chance to be total bitches about everything, and emotionally abuse the companionship of our BFFs and make them door mats with a fancy name (read Maid of Honor).
I said we yearn for our wedding day, not marriage. For most of the time, even when all our aunts sit us down and give us advice (Don’t marry the one you love, marry the one you can tolerate; Love dies, hunger doesn’t- so learn how to do more than boil rice etc), nobody is ever ready for what the find about they become Mrs. Soandso. That said, I have never been in any of those ‘Aunty’ discussions. Neither have I ever been in a pretend marriage (come we stay). Nor have I ever been engaged. In fact, I have not dated for a very, very, long time.
But that’s why I am here. That’s why I have been thinking about my life very seriously and decided that save for the fear of my eggs drying up before I can sire a pretty little girl that will have dreadlocks like me, there’s a few other reasons why I need the same warm body in my bed the rest of the days of my life.
1. My eyes are dim I cannot see, I have not brought my spectacles with me
If you had a fancy Canadian primary school teacher, you might recognize those lyrics to that awesome round song, but for now let’s work with what we all know: remember the nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice? I am mouse No. 2 with my -5 myopia. My friend Joe is -8, so he unanimously takes the lead.
Ask any short sighted person and they will tell you that misplacing your glasses is more tortuous than what Daniel Craig went through in Casino Royale when they continuously hit his scrotum with a swinging mallet so that they could get information from him. Ok maybe not that level of torture, but there are days I have been very close to pulling my hair out in frustration because I couldn’t find my glasses. And this is not from a level of absentmindedness where by your specs are above your fore head but you’re FBI searching the whole house (that happens to me too by the way), no. I’m talking about when you place your specs on the dresser to go and take a bath, and when you come out you can’t find them. They are quite literally under your nose, but thanks to your blurred vision, you may as well be looking for a light skinned Dinka.
Anybody who has ever been woken from deep, deep slumber (usually at the wee hours of the morning) just to help a blind mouse find her glasses, will tell you that this is a very valid reason to want to get married. Because if you’re going to rouse someone from sleep, it better be somebody who loves you enough not to want to kill you. Unless your life insurance is great thus he has everything to gain by you being dead. Including uninterrupted sleep.
2. Constructive Criticism
There’s a robust 5 year old little man that lives with me and bears my genes that happens to have one taste bud: DEEELEESHUS! That word, and an empty plate is every mommy’s dream. It’s also every chef’s dream. However, even if you’re an Ace on a daily, there’s always room for improvement. When my marriage has reached the level of survival-on-tolerance, I’m sure my husband shall not spare my feelings when it comes to testing the recipes I conjure up.
While I’m sure he will always say “Yes†when I pull a “Do I fat in this dress?†I also know that he will be the most blunt and honest about my food. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s that if a person who is bound to you forever (by choice or a lapse of insanity) says that your food is good, then you know you are doing a lot of things right!
3. Invisible zips
Anybody who’s ever met me knows that not only do I have the wardrobe of a butch lesbian, but I also have the wardrobe of butch lesbian circa 1995. What’s the point anyways? We all know that fashion designers exhausted all their creativity and disguise that fact by bringing the fashion trends of our grandparents back in vogue. Not only does this display my enormous patience with the world at large, but can I just throw in that word thrifty in here too? Keeper, aren’t I? Very relevant to this post, I might add. If Pocahontas were alive, she would understand my point of view. While I have no sense of fashion, I clean up real good. Yes kids, this is what your teacher called a paradox when you weren’t listening in class. Now you know. I digress.
Here’s the thing about fancy dresses: they have very tricky zips. Fancy, delicate and sewn in an unseen manner, a fact that for me, is the essence of dainty in these outfits. See now most, if not all of these zips, are placed at the back of the dress. While this is already a challenge if you’re on your own, there is also the hold-your-breath part in this horror movie. These dresses usually have a snug fit, hence the deep squats and double crunches a week prior to the day you have to wear them, and in order for zipper to go up, you HAVE to suck it in whether you have the body of Charlize Theron, or that of an American teenager. These dresses need a crew if they’re gonna be worn. And what better crew than that of one man who knows your contours in the dark, and shall get some bit of sadistic enjoyment poking you around and grumbling under his breath.
And just in case you’re wondering, asking question such as: why don’t you just get a bigger size?, is possibly why most husbands die earlier than their wives.
4. Mr. Fix-It-Gadget-Boy
I find Windows 8 extremely annoying, and I cannot for the life of me, operate a computer designed by the late Steve Jobs. There! I said it! I am a self confessed techno-phobe. So bad, that my television still has a butt thingy that protrudes at its rear- the fellows from Kenya National Archives will be here soon to collect this antique I presume. Sometimes I worry about the tech future for my son: the only video game his mother ever played in her life was being the Frosty guy from The Incredibles. I skid on ice on a game on my housemate’s X-Box back in 2007 for about two minutes, and got bored stiff. True, we didn’t have these gadgets while growing up yet we turned out OK. And believe me at 5 years of age, Nigel always reads a book before going to bed every day, but there’s so much pressure these days man!
It’s not like I can’t fix a bulb, or release an air lock in the piping system, or connect the speakers correctly to the telly, but a husband would do it 5 times more efficiently, and effectively. Also, I cannot release the airlock in the piping system. Or connect the speakers correctly.
Seriously though, what’s with that Apple Operating System???? I imagine that’s what American’s feel when they drive in London, isn’t it? Never been? Me neither.
5. The birds and the bees
I remember the joy on my brother’s face when he left with our then next door neighbor (and still very good friend) and my father to go and get the cut. The whole morning before departure, he (Bropunzel) couldn’t shut up about how he was leaving the house as a boy, but would come back a man.
He did come back as a man. A man who wailed like a little baby when the anesthesia wore off. I listened from outside his room (I am a man now, you cannot come in here! He managed to say between sobs) as I ate all the goodies Dad had bought him. But a man, nonetheless.
A lot of good men have been raised by single women. If anything, children raised by single moms grow up to be respectable members of the society. Still, it would be nice for someone with a similar appendage on his groin to teach my son how to clean his, and eventually how to sheath it.
Clearly, I know nothing about marriage but still: my dreams are valid.