I don't wanna get all bloggy on you guys, but well, here we go...
Most of the time, [Maris] and I feel like the only sane people in a lunatic asylum filled with 7 billion patients and no doctors. In recent years, we've come to understand that in reality, it's the other way around. It is we who are apparently defective, in so many ways. Either way, we are now fully aware that we do not belong here. You know, like, on Earth, with you nice people.
Exhibit A: We don't like coffee. At all. I know! Somehow, with both made it through college and retail jobs and decades of being complete night-owls and beyond our thirties without developing a taste for - let alone addiction to - coffee. Caffeine - yes! Mountain Dew for [Maris] and Coke/Lime Diet Coke for me. But not coffee. Just to add some weird sprinkles to the weird frosting that is our coffee-free existence, [Maris] absolutely adores the smell of coffee beans. Walks down the coffee aisle at the grocery store, just snorting the aroma. Brew it up and place it before her, and it's hemlock. "It tastes like burnt dirt in water."
Exhibit B: We don't watch "reality" TV in any form, including the "talent" competitions. We used to watch "The Soup," because Joel McHale and his writers are brilliant, but a couple of years ago, it reached the point where sitting through the clips from the actual shows became so unbearable that we couldn't even get to the funny stuff. What's new with The Bachelor? How's that new kid who can more or less carry a tune doing on A.I.? What happened in that cliffhanger on The Kardashians? Don't know. Don't care. If we had known that all it took to get rich and C-list famous was to do a sex tape or whore ourselves out in a scripted show with a bunch of narcissistic 15-minutes-of-fame-seekers, we could have done all of that and more. Well, maybe ten years ago. Not that we're bitter. Hey, if it's what you want and the machinery is in place for you to make it happen, who are we to stop you. Just please, go away. Soon. You're taking up valuable airtime that could be occupied by more interesting things. (watch for a future post about the downfall of western civilization, wherein "reality" TV will play a central role.)
Exhibit 3: We cringe at the sight (or sound) of bad grammar, made-up words and the abundance of other evidence of the death of the English language. Sadly, that somehow makes us the defective ones. Yeah - we're the weird ones. But just being grammar Nazis doesn't make us that odd. It's the fact that one minute, we'll be bitching at a commercial featuring subject-verb disagreement and the word "deliciocity," and the next thing out of our mouths will be some abomination of English, lifted from "Family Guy" or "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia." Wait. That just makes us hypocrites. That's not weird at all. That's the norm, today! Okay, never minds Exhibit's 3.
Exhibit D: We don't fight. I know, I know. Lots of couples think they don't fight. Seriously, we simply don't. It's not because we agree about literally everything, or have an unhealthy aversion to marital conflict; we just have neither the time, nor the energy for fights. We were already in our thirties when we married, so we have to use all our minutes being smug about our happiness together. Fighting is not on the schedule. It's not like we don't want to fight -- we do! But we can't think of anything to fight about. I'll just stop now. I can hear your skeptical harrumphs. It's true, though. Sorry.
Exhibit E: We love kids, but don't have or want any of our own. This is obviously big enough to be its own post. Hell, it could be its own blog. It's complicated, and don't even start with us because we've heard it all before. Our child-free existence is not a condemnation of almost every other couple on the planet. However, more often than you might expect in 2011, we're thought to be selfish, stupid or utterly insane for not wanting to procreate, and we're perceived as child-hating, anti-family assholes who stand in judgment of all parents - as if we are "right" and everyone else is "wrong." It's not really okay, but we understand. Anyone who deliberately does something differently is automatically seen as disapproving of your way, and by extension, of you. We're the ones going against the grain, here. I just marvel sometimes at the giant toes that surround us, just waiting to be stomped upon. We love kids, and we're not having any, and that's okay. And you're okay, too. We're all okay! Except you English ruiners. We hate you guys.
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