Marriage Is the Dark Horse Alternative

TEDDY: I woke up last Sunday in a dorm room in Harvard's Dunster House, logged into facebook.com and noticed a recently published photo album entitled, "Austen and Tito's Wedding!!! Location: East Hampton." It wasn't the first album of this nature I'd encountered. I contemplated waking up my lady friend, who is Harvard class of 2008, to show her the album and quite possibly ask for her hand in marriage, but instead I sat at the foot of her bed and watched her sleep. I figured she might need to get a few core requirements out of the way before officially agreeing to tie the knot, and in our case, jump on a sheet of glass as a symbol of our place in the Jewish tradition. I was surprised by the marriage of Austen and Tito--though I had actually read a short story written by the bride a year before confirming their love. Perhaps because I had just spent a cramped night on an extra-long twin bed in a college dorm room, I just could not imagine myself on the altar in the Adobe Photoshop of my mind. See, marriage has recently emerged as the dark horse alternative for many college students and recent graduates. Obtaining binding consent hasn't been this easy and simultaneously stigmatized since the time of our grandparents or since Pope Alexander III passed the edict of verba de praesenti in the 12th century, which gave young lovers the chance to wed without parental interference. Some say that edict consolidated the power of the church, but in my opinion, its only effect was to consolidate the power of love! One should never underestimate the strength of Cupid's arrows (and possibly the eagerness to fornicate with religious approval). Earlier this summer, I went to a family friend's wedding outside of Philadelphia. I hadn't seen her in almost three years, and I heard she had become quite a religious Jew. In keeping with the mores of her peers, she was getting married at the age of 21. At the wedding, I recalled a few baths we had taken together as young children. "The one that got away," I said to her new husband. He looked at me curiously and I shook his hand. I guess what all this amounts to, what my blogumn is all about, is a step towards the ultimate articulation of marriage's place in the life of the 20+ male.