Here now, a hot factoid of curious news that will stupefy your parents and confound any extant grandparents and make many fundamentalists and most Mormons clutch their dogmas to their quivering breasts in mild but surefire panic.
The item goes like this: For the first time in US history, married couples are no longer the majority of domestic couplehoods in the United States, and have instead been replaced/outnumbered by... what shall we call them? The unsure? The pleasantly stoned? Freedom fighters? Those Who Still Have Somewhat Hot and Mostly Regular Sex?
For the rest of us, it's easy to get snagged on one of the polarizing views. On one hand is the typical conservative recoil, claiming the very cornerstones of what once made this country great -- early marriage, traditional family structure, factory jobs, free guns at church, xenophobia, mommy's vodka and daddy's stash of gay porn -- are crumbling to dust, America is in a liberal-induced deathspin and the "Greatest Generation" now only refers to higher Medicare payments and sepia-toned WWII Spielberg movies on HBO.
Be married. Or don't. Wait longer. Or don't. Have beautiful children, buy a home, get a certain kind of job, settle down, follow some sort of path you think you're supposed to follow. Or don't. There are alternatives, variations on a theme, inversions and permutations and reinventions on a dime, and this is generally a very good thing indeed.
To think it's supposed to be some other way? To keep believing that if everyone would just follow a similar and harshly regulated path to the same narrowcast ideas of love and marriage, that we'd somehow have peace in our time and Jesus would finally return carrying a million pink roses and a billion $99 heart pendants from Zales? That we think we have the slightest clue how it's all supposed to unfold? This is, by a huge margin, the most dangerous idea of all.
Me'n Mrs. G have been married for 38 years. Like the fellow who jumped off the 30th floor said as he went by the 15th, "So far, so good..."
What the fuck do we know about "how it's supposed to be"? Works for us. We like pushrod engines and revolvers too. Throwbacks 'R Us.
By the way, our pal Bustednuckles, "Ornery Bastard", is engaged to Nasty Girl. Besides wanting to see that in the Wedding Announcement section of the paper, congrats and welcome to Officially Behind The Times. Heh.
There's no sin in a loving relationship. There may be in living a lie and being miserable. Hey, whatever blows yer skirt up.
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