The Marriage Pool

What question am I tired of?: "Sabrina, when are you going to get married?" I often wonder if the people who ask me this expect me to pull a Sex in the City and marry myself. I am currently not in a relationship and despite other people's banter, I am just fine being single. My male counterparts have no such problem. People ask them about their  careers and their life goals. They do not assume that catching themselves a woman is a top priority. And why should they? Why do women need to be married to have their goals met?

Even once a couple is engaged it is the woman, not the man, who is hounded about the wedding: dress, bridesmaids, color, flowers, blah blah blah. Just think about the t.v. shows that base themselves around the bridal industry- Bridezilla and Say Yes to the Dress in all of its incarnations, my favorite being the Bridesmaids edition. Something is missing though. Where are the groom shows? Somehow Say Yes to the Tux! doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
All of these shows echo the same train of thought "This is the Bride's day!" or "THIS IS MY DAY!" depending on the level of crazy. Here's the thing, it's not just the brides day. There is also a groom involved. And isn't marriage supposed to be about love? Maybe that's why homosexuals aren't allowed to get married in most states! No one would know whose day it is! The wedding day can't be about two people! That's absurd!

So why is it "the bride's day"?  Because there is A LOT more money to be made if the wedding industry markets it that way to the American people. Brides are expected to spend money on a dress, shoes, jewelry, veil/tiara, fittings, bouquet(s), garder(s), nails, hair and that's only some of the stuff for the wedding day, and that will literally run you thousands of dollars. Grooms, meanwhile, have the tux rental, boutonnieres, shoes and maybe a fresh haircut. So maybe a couple hundred at most. Doesn't take a degree to figure out that the money is in highlighting the bride. But this is not my main point.

I have heard from many women my age and younger "I want to get get married in ___ years." Or "I want to be married by the time I'm (whatever age)". This is troubling especially when the women who are saying this are single. For those of you who feel that you want to be married at a certain age or in X amount of years but not to a specific person, I hope you are happy settling because that's exactly what you'll be doing. You won't be waiting for "the one" but rather you'll be settling for the idea of what some other person could possibly be all because some imaginary deadline you have given yourself is about to run out. This is a grave injustice to both of you. For the most part, quick marriages lead to quicker divorces. Why? Because you don't know the person yet. And they don't really know themselves. Hell, the brain can't even really understand that you are mortal and capable of dying before the age of 25. Why would you get married when you're brain can't even grasp that you could die? Statics have shown that those who marry early, particularly, before their brain has fully matured have a much higher rate of divorce.

So by now you might be thinking I'm crazy or you may be in complete agreement with me. Either way, you're probably wondering what any of this has to do with the title The Marriage Pool. Well my female friends that I graduated with from high school all feel about the same as I do about marriage and specifically, getting married young. And it was through one of our conversations that the marriage pool was born.

The marriage pool, much like a death pool (death pools are illegal because people were literally killing each other over them), has a group of people pay to get into the bet, for us $25, and then as people get married they pay into the pool $50. The last remaining single person wins the money. We figured if nothing else the money will help to pay the winner back for money spent on everyone's weddings. Also if anyone gets divorced they still cannot win the pool. At the time this was agreed upon between us all everyone was in a relationship. None of us are in a rush to get married and three are still in long term relationships.

Once we came up with the pool, I began to think, what makes my group of high school friends so different from other women our age who are seemingly dashing down the isle? We have very different backgrounds from each other since we left high school. We all went to different colleges, different graduate schools, none of our fields of study or jobs are alike, and we all live in different states. The difference between us and the women who are consumed with the idea of marriage, I have come to believe are that we are all feminists who went to graduate school. Studies have shown that people who go to graduate school tend to wait longer to get married. And this is not to say that feminists are completely against marriage, most of us aren't. We do have some issues with the ceremonies and other things surrounding marriage, for example: gay people aren't allowed to get married in most states and with Christian vows the women having to say "Love, honor, and obey". Fuck that shit.

 We all need to recognize the pressure put on specifically, young women, to get married. And everyone putting the pressure on us need to knock it off, it's not cute. My family has at least given up on harassing me about marriage because I have made it quite clear I will not be bullied into settling. I have a long list of things that I want for myself/thing I want to do and I don't want to have to take into consideration someone's feelings and the impact it'll have on their life into consideration. Sound selfish to you? Here's the thing: it's my life, no one else. And since I believe I only have one life, I have sectioned off the remainder of my 20s for myself, to do all the things I want to do; to make mistakes and learn from them while laughing about it; for staying out all night, coming home at dawn after making a giant penis in the snow, and for doing all the things you can't do when you have a family. I don't want to have any regrets in my life. And I don't see waiting 5 or 10 years to marry someone as being a regret. I would, however, see marrying the wrong person and getting a divorce because I married way too young as a regret. It's all about perspective. And this is mine.   

The Rabbit Hole

Before we head further down the rabbit hole, I should probably let you, my dear readers, in on a secret. I'm dyslexic. I know what you're thinking. "She's a feminist and dyslexic?!?! They'll let anyone have a blog won't they?!?" And they will actually. I'm telling you all this because you will probably notice some grammatical errors, especially when it comes to >>> , and ; <<<. I have a BA in English and still have a hard time figuring out where those suckers go. This is not an excuse for not editing my work, I will be editing and having someone else look over it too (hi Sean!!). But my dyslexia gave me an idea. I have read many articles about dyslexia but very few written by dyslexics.

Dyslexia has impacted my entire life. There's a lot more to dyslexia than just seeing letters backwards. Although I sometimes see and write letters swtiched...I mean switched, I can easily catch that mistake and fix it. The plus side is I can write backwards with ease. Downside, this special ability did slow me actually learning how to read. My spelling however, is a story all its own. I've never been a good speller, but I have always had a robust vocabulary. I often have to "dumb down" my language when writing because I can't even get Google or spell check to recognize what I am trying to spell. Talk to text has helped but I do not want to rely on that because that will not help my spelling, it'll only make it worse in the long run. One of the hardest things about my spelling is some days I can't remember how to spell simple words. I become so frustrated with myself, I can literally be moved to tears. In school, I never wanted to admit that I was dyslexic for fear of being outed as a "SpEd." But I would be, and if I am being honest, still am, crushed when people make fun of my spelling. I'm not stupid. I'm just dyslexic. And there is a difference.

Dyslexia makes me see things differently than other people. Things that seem obvious to me, are not to other people which helps me to think outside of that box everyone is always carrying on about. However, the opposite is true as well. Sometimes I miss understand things that seemingly other people grasp easily. It's a give and a take. Albert Einstein was dyslexic and he changed the way we do math because he saw numbers differently. Couldn't do his hair for shit, but hey, priorities people. For me, I get hit the hardest in math. I make a simple mistake because my brain reverses numbers and 4,962 becomes 4,692. And unlike with swtiched and switched,both 4,962 and 4,692 are numbers. My brain has no way of recognize the mistake. And in more advanced math I can't remember what I have learned. In 10th grade I had geometry the last period of the day, and by the time I got home from school I couldn't remember how to do my homework, 45 MINUTES LATER! I eventually got a math tutor, but that did little to help. I'm also bad at mental mapping, which means it takes me awhile to learn how to drive somewhere, and if I learn how to drive there during the day there is no guarantee that I can remember how to get there at night. Sucks right?


One of the reasons why I am so intent on declaring I am not stupid is an incident that happened a long time ago. When I was 5 I went to “transitional” instead of first grade. I had started kindergarten early (I was 4) and they were afraid that I would be socially inept if I continued onto first grade with my class. During transitional I had the worst teacher I would ever encounter, Mrs. Cockrolle. Yes, you are reading that right and her name was fitting. All I can remember from that year is that woman screaming at the lass of 5 and 6 year olds. I was terrified to speak in class for fear of being singled out. She would berate children for not knowing answers to the questions she asked. Mrs. Cockrolle made me cry on too many occasions to count, my mom recalls this because I would still be crying when I got home from school. Due to my unwillingness to speak in class and my terrified nature Mrs. Cockrolle decided to tell my mother that I was "retarded," yes she used that word, and that I would be "lucky" to graduate high school. I was five years old. And for good measure, the TeacherFromHell also told my mother that she was a bad parent. Looking back, my guess is she said this because my mom was a single parent because my parents were already divorced by the time I was old enough to go to school. And just for the record, my mom was and is awesome at parenting. The overarching theme of this story is: fuck that lady. How dare she or anyone for that matter traumatize children because she hates the job that she chose only because she got the summers off. She terrorized us on a daily basis and then had the nerve to blame us, I doubt I was the only one, for our behavior. It took me years to learn not to shut down when people yelled at me, thanks for scarring me and countless other children, Psychopants.


My mom, you remember, the "bad parent", knew something was seriously wrong at school and fought for me. And my mom made sure that it was put in my file that for the rest of my school days I was not to have any teachers that yelled because it severely hindered my ability to learn. The following year I had Mrs. Freid. She was the one who realized that I was dyslexic and the summer in between first and second grade, she worked with me one on one to get my reading where it should be.  Mrs. Freid did all of this without charge. I cannot thank her enough for the tremendous impact she had on my life and my ability to learn.

So why am I typing all of this at you? Partly because if you're reading my blog I'm more comfortable with you knowing the truth and identifying myself as a dyslexic. And my other motive, as I have kind of stated before, is to give some voice to dyslexics. Dyslexics are real people (I swear I'm not a more intense version of SmarterChild on AIM) and there is a lot more to us and our learning disorder than the comical "lysdexia". It took me a long time to understand that being dyslexic doesn't mean that I am dumb. It just means that I learn differently from other people and that sometimes I have to work harder than others to achieve my goals. So here I am. In all of my SpEd-cialness. Dyslexic and proud. Hope you enjoy the grammatical journey.          

A Feminists Adventures in Bro-dom

I have a confession to make. I am a feminist. I am a feminist with a lot of guy friends. I have a healthy mix of male and female friends but being friends with lots of women does not surprise people. Being friends with a bunch of dudes however, tends to be a shocker. People tend to be uneasy when men and women are friends to begin with. They assume that I am sleeping with or am in love with {fill in guy friends name], that either I am or that the guy is gay or something to that effect. Let me clear the air here: firstly, I am not gay(not that there'd be anything wrong if I were) and the guys don't pass me around like some living sex doll. My guy friends don't victimize me, and I think that this is pretty across the board for women with dude friends with few exceptions.  Secondly, the term "feminist" has a bad rap. So let's just get this out of the way, I do NOT think that women are better than men. I believe that we are all equal regardless of sex/gender/race/religion and so on and so forth. People tend to be surprised by the amount of guy friends that I have. And "people" does sometimes include other feminists. As though being a feminist I am not allowed to have a large population of men in my life. Or perhaps they simply feel that men would not want my company due to my beliefs. Regardless, this has led to some fun and interesting situations. Some of my guy friends are what most 20 somethings will refer to as "bros" and indeed, they themselves wear this title with pride. These friends tend to divorce the fact that their female friends/relatives are in fact, women. This is not to say that they are horrible people, they often are the sweetest and truest friends anyone could ever have, they do however, hold onto some antiquated ideas. This has at times made me shake my head and prompted some discussion but nonetheless, our friendships have blossomed. I believe one of my favorite instances of a well meaning bro-moments was when one of Ryan's(bro friend) friends from the navy came to town and after quite a few beers it had come out that not only am I a feminist, but I hold a Masters degree in Women's Studies *cue foreboding music*. To try and 'defend' my awesomeness, my buddy told him "She's cool man. She's just as good as a dude." That sentence reverberated around my brain. Just as good as a dude. The friend accepted this and moved on. I however, was not so easily swayed. I realized that Ryan meant no harm by what he said and that he was trying to compliment me, which meant that I did not flip out and made a mental note that we would be having an open conversation about that sentence and the ideas behind it.  Being confrontational, especially when people have been drinking is no way to convince anyone of anything, and will certainly only enforce the idea that feminists (and women) are crazy. But this still troubled me and made me sad. But this did get me thinking. Is this what my guy friends (or at least the bro ones) think? That I am in some way an exception to the rule that women are for boning not for friendship. A few years ago, I would have loved being told that I was "just as good as a dude". Because being male is the standard in our patriarchal society which means that all things female are lesser. Do I think my friend meant to say that I am not as good as he is? No. Did he mean that women are not as good as men on a larger scale. Maybe. After reflecting on this some, I still do not have all of the answers on how to combat all of these ideas. I tackle them as they come up and try to be a good will ambassador, if you will, for both women and feminists alike on this. I have also deemed these instances, and believe me there are a TON more, as one of the many reasons why it is good that I have these friendships with my bro-friends. Not only do both parties(me & them respectively) get a great friend out of the deal but I also get to expose them to ideas that they would never have considered otherwise. Because they do, in fact, value my opinion(s) and they know I'm not what their perceptions of feminism have been/is, and are therefore, more open to discussions. And I am able to experience who my bro-friends really are. Not what society has stigmatized them as. If not for the men in my life like Ryan, who is such a wonderful human being, let me just say, then I would steer clear of anyone proudly touting the bro-culture and never realize they are more than just a label as well. We have something to learn from each other, even if for me it is how to get them to understand that they hold some problematic views from where I am standing and why. I don't expect to create an army of feminists out of friends but I do hope to encourage respect and dispel previously held beliefs at least. As a feminist in bro-land I don't know my way around yet, but I do enjoy the adventure.