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GenePool
Humor
Relativity
In most respects, time is a meaningless human construct. It is entirely relative to the observer. Einstein had a lot to do with this perspective, recognizing as he did that if light travels at a constant speed, something else had to give, and that something was time. We see events happen in a specific order because of entropy, i.e., the idea that energy decreases in space as disorder increases. Thus, the arrow of time points in the direction of progressive destruction. The dropped teacup falls to the floor and shatters, rather than assembling itself from ceramic chips in a counter-gravitational trip to the table top. This is why you should never ask a physicist if he knows the time.
I bring all of this up because we just celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. I'm having a lot of trouble believing that I have now been married for over 30% of my life, and I attribute this, at least partly, to all time being relative.
Equally suspect is the notion that Becky is nearly ten years old. Just to review, she was in diapers last week, and said her first words only a couple of days ago. I expect she'll be hitting puberty tomorrow, and getting her driver's license and her first hickey by Tuesday. College starts a week from Monday.
Curiously Tim, an official year younger than Becky, has been four years old for most of his life. Just about the only thing he's touched up since he actually was four is his articulation and his Nintendo skills. We were more alarmed by his apparent arrested development until we met some of the boys in his class, all of whom are three.
Meanwhile, I'm just catching up. I went from twenty-two to thirty the day Becky was born, and I haven't aged since, except for my stomach and my hair. My hair is on a different timetable, as my scalp is making a concerted effort to produce a lifetime of hair in forty years, after which I shall be bald. This is why I already have white hairs, the first of which showed up the day after Becky's birth. My stomach apparently thinks I am going to be a fat man, and is trying to accelerate the process so it can relax. I realized this after buying pants last night when Deb and I went out to celebrate our anniversary. (We didn't just buy pants. It'lll make sense in a minute.) If you are unfamiliar with the process involved in purchasing men's pants off the rack, understand that only two measurements matter: length and width. In my entire life my waist size has never matched or exceeded my inseam length. Until last night. After twenty minutes of searching for pants with a 34 inch inseam, I retired to the dressing room to try them on. Legally speaking, I still fit into the pants with the 33 inch waist, but only if I rearranged my internal organs slightly, never exhaled, and didn't mind losing the feeling in my left leg. (Deb hasn't changed all that much. What changes have taken place I am under strict orders not to identify. This is how one gets to stay married for ten years. Please take note.)
We were required to celebrate our tenth anniversary, and this involved spending a fairly large amount of money, which is, I believe, in the vows somewhere. I attempted to explain to Deb that while ten years may seem like a long time, and ergo cause for celebration of some sort, the span of "time" involved is fairly arbitrary, at least in the cosmic sense, given that the "year" is merely representative of the length of time it takes our planet to travel around the sun once. As such, the "year" on another planet would represent an entirely different span of time, and would be meaningless altogether if one were in space.
This didn't work. So I bought her a ring.
Deb has been dropping hints for six months now (six months ago I was still in college) about her desire to possess an anniversary ring. I didn't even know there was such a thing. Every time we were in a mall she'd drift toward a jewelry counter to admire the anniversary rings, prodding me with subtle reminders such as "I want an anniversary ring" and "you know, I'd like an anniversary ring." Much the way parrots will mimic sentences that are repeated often enough, Becky and Tim started in with it as well. By the week before our official anniversary, total strangers were calling me up to remind me, saying they read it on a billboard somewhere. Finally, a couple of days before February ninth (the anniversary) I asked Deb "so, what do you want for our anniversary?"
There is an official list of appropriate gifts one is supposed to give for anniversary celebrations, broken down by year. Very few heterosexual males have ever seen this list. Instead, we rely on women and gay florists to provide us with this information. I believe the list is completely arbitrary, which means it evolved from "tradition." It does, however, go up in price every year. The tenth anniversary is the diamond anniversary. The only other ones I know are the first-- paper-- and the twenty-fifth, which is plutonium.
The thing I don't get is, I've already gotten her a diamond ring. That was the whole point of the wedding ring-- to say, first, "here's an expensive stone to commemorate our union" and second, "you're all set for diamonds now, right?" I mean, diamonds are supposed to be timeless, so why can't the wedding ring be the tenth anniversary ring too, especially since all time is relative?
I don't need to tell you how Deb felt about this particular line of reasoning. So on Friday night we went out to Filene's, which is an upscale department store that has a nice selection of men's pants and jewelry, and also where we have available credit. We were even able to defer payment on the ring until June, which I have elected to view has being an eternity away.
With that out of the way, we went to see "Hannibal." You might think this is probably not the best choice in terms of romantic films one might consider viewing when celebrating one's anniversary, and you'd be right. But the movie theater has this neat little annex called Premiere seating. You get there early and eat a nice (i.e., expensive) meal, then enjoy the movie in a large, comfortable, reserved seat with a pull-out table and as much liquor as you feel like buying at the restaurant bar. The drawback is that since there's only one screen, you're stuck with the film they decide to show that week. The last time we went here we saw "Meet the Parents," which was not nearly as funny as it was supposed to be.
Also, I wanted to see "Hannibal." "Silence of the Lambs" is on my personal list of all-time favorite films. I remember seeing it for the first time-- ten years ago-- like it was yesterday. (Because it WAS yesterday.) I wanted to see "Hannibal" even after concluding, after reading the book, that Thomas Harris consciously wrote a sequel that would be so bad nobody would even think of making a movie out of it. Clearly, there is no such thing as a sequel so bad nobody would make a movie out of it.
Thankfully, they changed the ending. A lot of people were evidently upset with the end of the book, but not for the same reason I was upset. I had a no trouble with the gore. I had trouble with the part where Lecter and Starling make love and then run off together. I bet you think I'm kidding.
Anyway, it was a memorable evening. I'm sure
on our twenty-fifth anniversary-- some time next month-- we'll
look back fondly on the whole night. By then, I should be able
to afford the plutonium ring, provided I haven't gone broke buying
gifts for the great-grandkids.
© 2001, Gene Doucette
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