Sunday, July 06, 2008

Love and Marriage



I was looking at pictures of a good friend's engagement party on Facebook today.  It was cool to see.  It made me realize that a good number of my friends are married or getting married this year.  This made me think about my love life, which is never a good thing. 

The thing is you grow up side by side with your friends and like trained circus tigers you pass through life's hoops one after another.  Middle school, high school, college, work.  I'm not sure what to make of this seismic shift of friends who are getting themselves hitched.  In some parts of my mind I feel like the retarded kid who has to do 4th grade all over again. 

When I think of my married friends though, I can't imagine being like them and I got to think they can't imagine being like me either.  I don't even have a girlfriend.  Shit, I'm not even trying.  Even when I talk to a girl I'm on a plane the next week to another country. 

I realized something as I wrote this.  A part of me doesn't want to grow up.  This is not to say that I have some weird Peter Pan psychosis.  I don't plan on commuting to work on a skateboard nor do I plan on dating 16 year old girls (ladies, call me when you're legal).  When I was young often what motivated me was the belief that I had "potential".  I'm not sure what that meant exactly. It's not like I thought I could be Superman or Spiderman but I did think I could be Batman because after all, Bruce Wayne was just a regular dude with blue spandex and a cape. 

That kind of hope gave me something to live for.  It made me feel like anything was possible.  Even today, I like to think that, at age 29, I haven't reached my full potential.  In the World of Warcraft game of life, I still have more experience points, swords, and magic potions to gain before I log off and do my homework.

I've always believed that it is the job of women to crush the hopes and dreams of men.  This isn't a bad thing because often men need to be held back.  Would Hitler have killed so many Jews if he was a family man?  Who knows?  Maybe I'm wrong and in this Venn diagram, living an exciting fulfilling life and being a stable and responsible family man are not two mutually exclusive circles floating aimlessly in space.  There might be a proper intersection and it might just come when the right girl comes along.  That or you just keep lowering your expectations until someone makes the cut.

I don't know much but I do know this.  At some point in my life I want to go to the basketball court with my 5 sons.  They would shoot 3's, pass with precision and slam the rock with authority.  Winded and disoriented the other ballers on the court would say,

"Yo. Your boyz gots too much skillz.  Let's mix it up"

to which I would jauntily reply:

"Knickerbocker please.  I grew this team.  Come back when you got YO' seed" 

I figure it's a lot to ask a woman to bare me 5 sons with superior ball handling skills.  The least I could do is make her an honest woman.  Yes, someday Toshi will get married.  This begs the question, does anybody have any cute friends who will bear my seed?


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