I must commend our local sage, who has done a great service for the next generation. Choosing a life's partner is tricky business, but with guidelines like these, fewer people will make a tragic mistake:
So then, whom could you marry? A long time ago we came up with
something we called "Esolen's Rules." They're only half facetious.
But they are an attempt to get at the normal:
1. Don't marry a
woman who likes cats but does not like dogs. You may marry a woman who
doesn't like either, or whose reason for not liking dogs is that one of
them bit her when she was a toddler. But a woman who likes cats but
does not like dogs will be a Joan Crawford or Jane Wyman. Ronald
Reagan married Jane Wyman, and look how sorry he was about that.
2.
Don't marry a man who is neater than you are. You may, however, marry
a man who polishes his tools and puts them away after use....
3.
Don't marry anybody, man or woman, who says, "I'm going to call you at
eight," and then leaves you waiting by the phone for an hour.
Exceptions can be made for people who are kidnapped by Arabs, or who
have epileptic seizures.
4. Don't marry anybody who insists on a
separate bank account, bed, bathroom, vacation, or zip code. It makes
no sense to be one flesh and two wallets.
5. Don't marry a woman
who spends more on makeup than she does on food. In general, don't
marry a woman who engages in the sin of reverse gluttony.
6.
Don't marry a man who does not like dogs. Such men do not like
children. Don't marry a man who does not like children. On the other
hand, I have known at least one excellent man who thought he didn't
like children, until he had some; seven, I think, at last count.
Perhaps the rule may be rephrased: Don't marry a man whom you cannot
imagine rolling on the ground in a wrestling hold, with a Labrador
retriever or three children, or hollering on a ferris wheel, with a
Labrador retriever or three children.
7. Don't marry a woman who
exercises so frequently that you cannot tell if she is a woman or a
very strange looking 13-year-old boy. I'm going out on a line here,
but the real purpose of the rule is to determine whether she will mind
getting fat, as happens when you are going to have a child. In other
words, don't marry a woman whom you cannot imagine having a child. Do
not marry a woman who does not like children.
8. Do not marry a
man who treats his mother or his sisters discourteously. As he treats
his mother, so will he treat you. But by all means do not marry a man
who takes his direction from his mother, or who is ruled by his
mother's ambitions. Mama's boys are unhappy, and they make their wives
unhappy too. So are the mothers of mama's boys, come to think of it.
Unhappy days are here again.
9. Do not marry a woman who sneers
at innocent male pastimes, such as football. Such women do not really
enjoy the company of men, and after a period soon reached, do not enjoy
the company of their own husbands. They are also the most ignorant of
what men are really like. You may marry a tomboy, so long as she's a
girlish tomboy and doesn't take the sport with dreadful seriousness.
You may marry a Daddy's girl, so long as she is not spoiled when it
comes to money.
10. Never marry anyone who is secretive about money. Such people are also secretive about sex.
11.
Never marry a man who lets you take the initiative in everything. You
want a jellyfish, maybe? You want Burt Lancaster instead.
12.
Never marry a woman who never lets you take the initiative in
anything. You want a porcupine, maybe? You want Maureen O'Hara
instead.
13. Never marry a woman who does not laugh at your jokes
or your buffoonery. That is one of the nicest ways in which men
"serve" women, and women respond by taking delight in the antics. That
is why God made impersonators of Marlon Brando, Sean Connery, and Homer
Simpson. It may in fact be the principal justification for the
existence of Marlon Brando, Sean Connery, and Homer Simpson. This rule
is simply an instance of the more general rule that you should never
marry a woman who does not genuinely admire you, nor should a woman
marry a man whom she does not admire.
14. Never marry anyone who
delights in "exposing" you in public. Teasing does not count; in fact,
never marry a man who cannot be teased. You can marry a woman who
cannot be teased.
15. Never marry a man who is not admired by
respectable male friends. The people in the world who know a man best
are the men he works and plays with. They know well if he is a cheat,
a thug, a loser. You may marry a man who does not have female
friends. If anything, you should be suspicious of a man whose friends
are principally female. The men may be avoiding him, and there is a
reason for that.
16. Never marry anyone who is not interested in
looking at your fourth-grade yearbook. This means: never marry anyone
who seems unaware that he or she is marrying also a family, a hometown,
a past, silly friends, comedies and tragedies. Never marry anyone who
does not want to meet your father and mother. If your sister doesn't
like him, dump him. If your sister doesn't like her, dump her. That
is why God created sisters. Their approval, however, is not a
sufficient condition; they will occasionally like losers, but they
almost never detest good marrying material.
17. Never marry a
feminist of either sex. That would be as bad as marrying someone with
the soul (not the occupation, but the soul) of a lawyer.
18.
Never marry anyone whom you catch in a lie, even a little one. Trust
us on this one. People in love are about the most gullible creatures
on God's green earth. In fact, beside the dictionary entry on
"gullible" there's a picture of a woman in love, eyes looking dreamily
upward, hands holding her chin; and a picture of an indignant young man
defending the honor of his beloved, who would never do such a thing, no
sir!
19. Never marry a woman who does not like to feed people, or
a man who does not like to help out with the removal of a junked car,
regardless of how much he knows about junked cars. By all means marry
a woman who enjoys seeing men eat, or a man who looks at a mudslide and
says, "I can make a really fine wall out of that."
20. Never
marry anyone, man or woman, who scoffs at virtue, who reduces "good"
and "evil" to arbitrary counters in the war of all against all, whose
humor is flippancy, who looks down upon janitors and maids, who cannot
delight in making simple things (like a batting T or a thank-you note),
who thinks tradition is old and shopworn (such people are followers of
every fad that comes), and who is never, ever, just relaxed, grateful
for a shady seat under the maple tree in fall. That is another way of
saying that you should never marry anyone who does not know who God is.
Comments
“People have realized that the complete removal of the feminine element from the Christian message is a shortcoming from an anthropological viewpoint. It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity."
This is just another of the unintended consequences of the cultural acceptance of contraception and abortion! Men's sexuality has been robbed of its creative essence. It is now viewed as something that imposes a burden on women (when conception happens to occur), something used to control women or something that is purely recreational. Why would men bother?? In taking away their responsibility, we've also robbed them of their significance! In the big picture of humanity, men have been made into nothing more than a nuisance women have to figure out how to control in order to bring about the next generation. Men don't see it as their task to protect the vulnerable because they see themselves as the vulnerable ones. A few well preserved vials of sperm would make men entirely obsolete in the world's ethos today!!
That is astounding Robin, and good for you for standing up. At the heart of that matter, I think, is even worse than a gender mixing message. There is an increased sharper and sharper focus on the "self." Solid Catholic teaching returns our focus away from ourselves to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The original sin, Eve denied her womanhood when she desired to be like "gods." Since the only god she knew was the Father. Where was Adam? He stood impotent... in other words, they were divorced. There's a young girl at Robin's son's high school who was just told that she is the center of the universe and it's a tragic disservice to her.
Ditto what Mary said! A lot of high schools have very poor math and science depts, for boys and girls. I also am educated as a chemical engineer, but chose to teach the two years before we had children because its hours were more suited to spending time with children. (I was looking ahead). When it came time and I was pregnant with our first, I realized that I did not want to leave him with someone else, and was able to stay home full time. I am not sure it would have been that easy if we were used to another engineering income and not just a private school teacher income. Also some of my first job offers were out on oil rigs - I had no interest in that at all even though I enjoyed my engineering classes and did well in them. No one discouraged me from an engineering job, on the contrary I got a lot of flack for my decision not to pursue an engineering career.
I've been lurking, but this is one that irritates me. Beats the heck out of me what these "barriers" are. I was educated as a chemical engineer, where 1/3 of our class was women. However, in electrical engineering, only 1 or 2 out of 30 were women. Is it possible that women are Just Not Interested in some areas? Nah, it must be The Man keeping us down so we must legislate (and, I agree -- when they say "legistlate", I hear "quota"). And actually, I have a friend that was also a chemical engineer. When she lost her job, she decided not to go back into engineering and started working from home so she could spend more time with her 3 kids. Also, if nothing else, there are all kinds of incentives for women to enter science and engineering -- scholarships not available to men, guaranteed housing on campuses that do not guarantee housing to the general population, etc. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that schools in general are not preparing students for the hard sciences. It is truly a sad state of affairs, the lack of science education these days.