Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Top ten reasons I get married.

So I said I'd tell you why I married my first husband and then I went off about my Grandmother. That's not as off topic as it might sound.

The truth is, I married my first husband soon after my Maw-Maw died and my slimy fiance dumped me. It doesn't take someone with Dr. in front of their name to put that one together. I was a lonely, afraid child in need of some direction. He was a Drill Sergeant with the United States Army and seven years my senior. He had plenty of direction.

I promised you I'd lay out the top ten reasons I got married and so I will. They spell out why I got married the first time and pretty much every time after that. If they serve no other purpose but to become a checklist of sorts spelling out why a person should not get married, then so be it. If you're thinking of getting hitched, it might be a smart thing just to run down the list. If you find some of your own reasons for saying yes to a proposal (or delivering a proposal) listed here, you might want to think like the Brady Bill and give yourself a little cooling off time.

The Big List

10. Every body else was doing it. Even though I was only nineteen when I married, you have to remember that I had that small town southern thing happening. I was well on my way to being a spinster.

9. I was tired of dating. When you start dating so young that you have to bring a booster seat along, you've covered a lot of ground by the time you're nineteen.

8. I didn't know what to do with my life. It was either get married or go to work in a hot factory. I thought I was way too cute to sweat.

7. He had a sweet car. Yeah... I'm especially proud of this one. In my teenaged mind, cool car equaled security. If he could afford a Mustang, he could surely afford me.

6. I didn't want to live at home any more. It never even crossed my mind that living with my parents was an option. I would have rather eaten dirt than moved back in with either of them. As it turns out, I nearly got my dirt-eating wish more than once.

5. I wanted to play house. That's about all I knew how to do. I envisioned hubby going off to work with a smile while I stayed at home and gave birth to 2.5 strikingly beautiful and well-behaved children. That is officially known as
Doris Day re-run syndrome.

4. I had no idea I could create my own destiny. Not once in four years of high school did anyone explain Pell Grants to me, nor did they ever have a conversation with me about how to get into college. I didn't even understand how a person enrolled in college. Way to go guidance counselors.

3. The guy asking always said, "You're beautiful and smart and funny". Magic words to me. Say that to me and I didn't need to hear much of anything else. I still have a problem in that area. I'm afraid if the check out boy at my grocery store ever says it to me, I'll wind up being Mrs. Check Out Boy and together we'll have Check Out children.

2. My self-esteem was in the toilet. Gee... you think?

And the number one reason I have been married more than once.......

It would be impolite to say no.

There you have it.

You might want to know the answer to the $64.00 question. Why in the world would a Southern Baptist girl that has known Jesus since she was eight-years-old keep getting divorced???

Here's the short answer:
I kept marrying men for the wrong reasons.

I seriously amaze myself. I'm an absolute psychiatric genius.

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