January 7, 2002
  Divorce and Andrew Lang

My first, "official" New Year entry -- ignoring the seven entries that are labelled December but actually didn't go online until the 31st and after -- requires that I start off with something funny, something representative, and something that'll set the tone for 2002. Right?

So the best way to do that, I figure, is with someone else'se writing. Dave Barry presents: Dave Barry on Windows.

And now that I've done that, on with the program.

The Guy and I were having dinner with Tara and Remington a couple of nights ago. Least there be any confusion about it at all, let me clarify that Tara was, of course, the one who was doing the cooking; we were participating by eating copiously. I brought cheese, that I produced in cooperation with families of cheese-makers in Italy and France. (They did the making: I opened the package.)

Anyway, the subject of divorce came up. "But wait," some of you are thinking. "Didn't Tara and Remington get married just a few months ago?" Yes, they did. However, for those of you who are keeping track, Tara cooks really really well. So well, in fact, that when she was off in Germany for three months -- that was the period when I actually had a car, mind, because she'd lent it to me at considerable risk to her insurance premiums -- Remington lost forty pounds and came to the airport looking quite svelte. My mom's neighbor, who is somewhere in his seventies, worked for Boeing, and now volunteers for the police, informed me that the women who get divorced are usually women who don't even know how to boil an egg. Tara, who knows how to boil an egg, is therefore not in any serious danger.

Tara and Remington informed us that X and Y, who I don't know, and N and M, who I also don't know, were getting divorces. This made some sort of impression on the Guy, who knows X and Y and N and M.

At dinner the next day, the Guy was still vaguely disturbed.

"It just bothers me," he said. "There are so many divorces taking place. People are getting married for the wrong reasons."

I paraphrase, of course. The Guy didn't actually say those words in that order, but the words were definitely spoken, in some arrangement or another.

"Pooh," he said.

(He might not have used that word.)

"What about the sanctity of marriage? Isn't anything holy anymore? Aren't people able to take the time and effort to work at a lasting commitment, a synchronicity of mind, body, and spirit that will weather the test of hardship and travail?" he asked.

(He didn't say anything remotely resembling that, but I'm sure he was thinking it so we'll take it as given.)

In my high school days in Seattle, I had a friend who was much older than I was who, in the years since, had gotten married, divorced, and moved to Montana. She told me after the divorce that men and women got married for different reasons. "Women get married because they think they've found 'The One,'" she said. "Men get married because they think they're ready to get married and whatever woman they're with at the time just happens to be convenient."

She was bitter. It wasn't a new concept, and I'm pretty sure I've read it somewhere, since.

I have nothing to say on the subject of divorce, either pro or con. My personal opinion is that all children should be rendered infertile at birth, in some kind of reversible procedure that's only turned off when they can prove to the state that they're financially, emotionally, and mentally fit to care for a child of their own, married or no. That's because my chief interest in a divorce lies with the children, not the couple.

This all brings me to the subject that I was actually really interested in, which is the whole thing about fairy tales. This'll make sense in a minute. I used to have this conversation all the time with my coworkers-that-were: Indian Mom, Indian Woman the Second, and the Manager. European fairy tales, the ones that half of my childhood grew up with, have a near universal theme. To wit: beautiful woman who might or might not be a princess. Handsome or intelligent or youngest boy, who might or might not be a prince. The two meet. The two overcome hardship. The two marry. They live happily ever after. The "happily ever after" is given, because nobody wants to hear about how Cinderella was obsessive-compulsive about waxing the floor, that Prince Charming was always off fighting dragons and collecting beautiful maidens he'd rescued to stock his castle with, how Cinderella realized that it wasn't just a coincidence that all the maids were Sports Illustrated swimsuit models on augmented health plans that included contraceptives, and how the two of them eventually split up in a bitter divorce that made tabloid headlines and polarized the nation, eventually resulting in a vicious civil war that decimated the country's tobacco crops and resulted in national bankruptcy and the rise of a military junta.

Nine out of ten European fairy tales are boy meets girl, boy gets girl, both live happily ever after.

Elsewhere in the world, in Japan, in India, and maybe even in China, the stories are different. The fairy tales from these countries seem to start out with the boy has girl. Boy has girl, boy gets separated from girl through the agency of a third party. Boy and girl struggle to find each other. Boy or girl annihilates third party, inflicting horrific karmic justice -- or learning that the separation was through the auspices of a god, who just wanted to test their love for each other -- and then boy gets back together with girl. Both live happily ever after.

Okay, so happily ever after is a trend. But here's the point. Boy already has girl. They're married. Or they're betrothed. The point is, they're already a pair. They've gone through something together already to get to where they are; what happens next is on top of that, and it's in order to get back to a tested love that they go through everything that they do. The tests aren't to get the girl in the first place for some amorphous "Love at First Sight."

I'm just saying, you know. It's worth thinking about.

It's a short entry, because I'm still recovering from a serious bout with Playstation Two-itis. I've yet to finish my New Years Resolutions, which is about par for the way I usually do my New Years Resolutions. Last year I hadn't finished writing them up until February 4th, and by then, I'd already broken about half of them. This year I'm taking recommendations from readers. Any ideas you have, please email to: yhirata1@attbi.com, where they will receive the respect and consideration they deserve. In fact, if they're good enough, I'll even post them, with credits. And comments, but that goes without saying.

Just so you know, line one is already taken. It reads: "Yuhri Hirata, Resolutions for 2002."

Anything else is fair game.