Where are WE going?

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Tomorrow will be too.

Why is it that nobody realizes you start fresh every day.

Why do people need to be married? I'm sure once upon a time there was a reason for getting married. I'm sure once upon a time that was the way to bind two people together because though there was marriage, there was like no such thing as divorce. Well, I mean, you COULD get divorced, but it was only after the court battles and church drama and stuff like that.

Binding people together. That's an interesting concept. While I realize that most of that has to do with child rearing and making sure the "family unit" stays together for the betterment of the child, what a pain in the ass it is to be bound to the same person for your entire life? Think about it, where is it fun to have the same food every single day your entire life?

Just think of it in those terms. Imagine that you have first taken your first bite of your favorite food. Your very first time to try it. Oh it's an oral orgasm. It's SOOOO good. The taste. The texture. Your mouth waters, endorphins are released, and your entire body responds to the pleasure of the food. The first time. The second time you eat it, you may experience some of that same sensation, but not necessarily as strong as the first time.

By the time you have eaten that particular favorite food for the 30th damned time, your body kind of goes "yeah, and?"

So, if you think of your significant other in terms of your favorite food, then you can see where my concept of marriage gets a little skewed.

Why? Why would you resign to only having one thing for the rest of your life when there is an endless (literally) variety of tastes to be sampled out there in the world?

If you're like me, you can be satisfied with eating steak & lobster every day for the rest of your life. That's my meal. No, not bologna. No, not ham & eggs. I mean steak and lobster, 3 meals a day. Yeah, I could do that. I have had bologna, ham & cheese. I even had bologna with "fixins" but now that I have steak & lobster, I really have no need to move on….

Satisfied.

But I am 38 years old.

Why would anyone at 18 want to do what I've done? Why would you not want to try out the tastes of the world - never knowing what really tastes good? Ah. There's that whole breeding and reproductive thing. It's the urge to mate and procreate that drives the ignorant to marry young.

I think it ought to be a law, Nobody can get married until they're 25. That's still not old enough, but at least it's a better chance and nobody should have children after 30. Here's how I think it ought to work:

18-19: Graduate from high school, spend 6 months preparing for military.

19-20: Spend at least 1 year in a modified "boot camp" type facility. After which, given an option of joining the military or opting out and receiving a full 4 year scholarship, paid by the government including books, to any 4-year college in America.

20-25: Spend 4 years in college. If after the first year in college, grades are not acceptable, scholarship is pulled and student must do 4 years MANDATORY military service. No options there. It's either that or student must leave the country. Strict discipline. Either fully paid college for 4 years or military for 4 years, nothing in between.

After 25, this person will have either a 4 year degree or 4 years of military under their belt. They may THEN and ONLY then be allowed to get married and have children. NOBODY should have children before the age of 25. That's just my personal feeling in the matter and this goes for boys and girls.

Does this sound like a dictatorship? Well, then it's a good idea.

Imagine if teen-aged children had a driving force to do well? Imagine if they knew that if they graduated top of their class in high school that they could opt out of that first year in the military and go straight into college, fully paid by the government? Would all of the children graduate with a 3.8 or above GPA if they knew they could get out of going into the military? Probably encourage that anyway.

Imagine if a kid knew that if he screwed up before he was 18 that no matter what his grades were AFTER 18 that he was going into boot camp and if he/she did not have grades good enough to graduate high school that he would go to mandatory boot camp and finish high school there?

Come on! Think about it. We would have an entire generation of human beings who were driven to excel, not driven to smoke crack or commit suicide. A future. They have a bright future ahead of them, a college education, and they're not given a choice in the matter.

Yeah, this is what I think. Am I crazy? Probably.

Still, I do think that video games and television, drugs and obesity, our lazy government and questionable moral standards have led to the decline we now face. The "kids" that are going to be running this country when I'm old frighten me, that's all. Kids that can sit for 2 days straight playing Xbox live without taking a bath or sleeping - scare me. Kids that can hold a conversation with each other online for 6 months and claim to be madly in love - scare me. Kids that fly into a jealous rage when their online gf/bf get a "comment" from an admirer - scare me. Um, grow up.

That's just it! They can't. They have no reason to. They have online games and online communities. They have no reason to leave the house and they commit themselves to online relationships instead because they are "safer". They are anonymous to the largest degree, but still - social decline seems to be spreading because nobody WANTS to meet someone in the flesh anymore.

Once upon a time people went to clubs to meet other people their age. Now they join MySpace or get in a chatroom somewhere. They sign on with a username like looknforluv and send unsolicited emails to everything with a breast, or a picture of a breast, one can never be sure with online dating. Now? Now when I get up in the morning I get online to check my email. Once upon a time I stayed up all night long talking on the telephone to my guy friends. Now, the conversation is far less personal and ends up LOL and ROFL instead of the perfunctory "uh huh, and yeah". I caught myself wanting to say ROFL on the phone the other day. Can you imagine my grandmother's confusion if I had said ROFL instead of simply laughing?

Our language has changed. Our lives have changed. Everything's changing. Except marriage. We'll be doing online weddings soon, God help us.