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How's Married Life Treating You?
September 2003
I was always a bit different as a youngster. I liked crazy clothes, crazy music, crazy dances, and Monty Python videos. (Not much has changed.) Of course, this inevitably brought comments from others.
When they weren't mean or rude, they were merely irksome. Even the most well-intentioned person could say something totally awkward and banal. The most popular comment of that nature was "What's up with the [insert thing that is unusual]?". If I wore a tuque in July, I got "What's up with the tuque?" If I listened to rap music, I got "What's up with the crap?"
This phenomenon bothered me to no end, mostly because it made
no sense. I could never really discern what exactly the asker
was asking. My thoughts would run the gamut: "What's up
with my tuque? Why? Is it stained? Ripped? What do you mean?
Does it offend you? Or does its colour merely clash with my
shorts? Does it smell bad? What's the issue here? Are you
asking why I'm wearing a tuque, or where I got mine?" I would
invariably just wish people would say something intelligible
or not say anything at all.
Of course, now that I'm an adult and I get paid to dress conservatively,
(among other things) this doesn't happen so often. That is,
it didn't until I went and did something really wild.
I got married.
Now my wife and I get a kick out of commiserating about the
adult version of "What's up with the neon pink station wagon?"
That, my friends, is "How's married life treating you?"
Type that very phrase into the search engine at www.google.ca. You see? I'm not the only crazy, radical, hyper-sensitive hippie to be annoyed by that most hackneyed quasi-inquiry.
What do people want when they ask that? Is the question up there with other such rhetorical stand-bys as "Where's the beef?", "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout Willis?", and "Wazaaaaaap?". Or does it translate roughly as "The most prominent news item in your life is your recent wedding, so I'll make a gauche semi-joke about that to kickstart the ol' small-talk machine"?
Many of the irked opt for sarcasm as their tool of choice for highlighting the ridiculous nature of this all-too-popular question: "It's awful", "What a let down", or "The beatings are bearable now that we're right with God."
To me, that's too obvious. I prefer the direct approach: "We've lived together for two years. We were engaged for a year. Why would our lives be any different after one day?"
Oh sure, some people try to make us look like bad people for being fed up with the ad nauseum monotony of this pointless silence-filler. They say "Well, people are just trying to be nice. Can't people just be nice?" Sure they can. But I'd like to propose a radical idea: let us all stop equating "nice" with "blithely following the established norms of human interaction."
This question may appear to show an interest in the
person's life, but it actually shows that the asker hasn't
stopped to think that the marriage they're alluding to was
not arranged, shotgun, green card, same-sex, or a dumb joke.
Whether or not the asker has taken the care to consider it,
their question suggests doubt that the newlyweds were stable
enough to justify marriage. It is not nice; it is thoughtless.
Let's start a little pop-culture trend away from this question. It's trite, it's unoriginal, and it's got to stop. If you must try to be nice, ask about the honeymoon, or life without the stress of wedding-planning. Now that's worth talking about.
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