"Love and Marriage, goes together like a horse and carriage..."

My grandmother decided that we should go out for a late lunch before I go to work, since we're going miss our usually friday night pizza-eating movie-watching experience. This week was my grandfather's funeral and.. we had just watched "When Harry met Sally," which i had never seen. So, when we're sitting there in chilly sleepy silence, waiting for our calzones to be delivered, I asked her how she met my grandfather. She was a nurse in the hospital where he had surgery for a severely dislocated shoulder. He asked for her phone number. She told him that she didn't give her number out to patients. He returned a week later to visit when his brother was having a hernia operation. He asked again and said, "I'm not a patient anymore, now I'm a visitor." I think she caves easily.

As the conversation progressed, i found out that my grandparents got married when she was 21. As did her older sister Kathleen. 21. We talked about my parents. My mom wanted to get married at 22, but circumstances kept them from tying the knot until she was 23. Both of my aunts are spinsters that got their hands on kids without finding the husband figure, so they will be excluded from this.

I said, "Geez, Grandma... 21? I'm 19. I know this is partially a generational thing, and social expectations have changed so that seems really early to me... but damn, I have two years?"

She explained that it's different because I'm going to be school for several years and then grad school. She already had her nursing requirements done by the time she was my age. But her explanation wasn't to tell me that getting married wasn't important or expected, it just means that I get extra time. Not to say that I am opposed to joining into that time honored tradition that everyone seems to be obsessed with, I just don't consider it very often. I have a hard time finding people of the opposite sex, particularly of my age, that are worth speaking to at all. And older people that have some wisdom and interest to offer tend to be married, unusual in expressing feelings, entirely repressed, scared, or completely opposed to becoming attached to someone younger than them due to their own idea of social barriers.

But it's expected that I will find someone near my own age, settle down somewhere and pop out my necessary 2.5 kids. And I have a whole line of women setting the bar for me, going back generations and generations.