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This is a long story, but I'm getting to a point, I swear.
A buddy of mine in college converted to Mormonism to date a girl. He was a character, but this story is going to be winding enough without getting into that. One day we went over to his girlfriend's house to meet before we all left to go see Lord of the Rings in theaters. I forget which one, maybe Fellowship. It doesn't matter.
It's around Christmas time, and this huge Mormon family is bursting at the seems with wholesome energy. Every little girl wants to show you want they've been baking with their mother. Every little boy wants to show you their somersault or some trick. The house is decorated, the Christmas tree is up, good times. So me and a buddy of mine are awkwardly sitting in the living room, not really sure what to do or say because this is not a vibe we grew up with. In addition to our usual awkwardness I might add. And two of these kids are throwing a little toy football closer and closer to the Christmas tree. My buddy and I, we don't say anything, but we're looking at each other with a panicked expression that needs no words. We are both thinking, if that ball actually hits that tree, a kid is gonna die in front of us.
Anyways, ball hits the tree, ornaments fall, train doing loops around the base falls over aaaaaaaand.... nothing. Dad chuckles, asks them to take it outside, life carries on like nothing ever happened. The boys clean up the mess they made and go throw the ball around outside. After my buddy and I piled into the car to go see the movie once everyone had arrived, we talked about how Christmas was at our homes growing up. How the house was transformed into a veritable museum of Christmas, and our mothers would fly into a violent rage if they so much as heard an ornament jingle due to a single heavy step within 20 feet of the tree. And it slowly dawned on us, that we were the fucked up ones. That family we just visited, they were the happy well adjusted ones.
It sucks realizing in your 20's that you were raised wrong. And not just "could have done better, but basically OK", but fundamentally the opposite of how you should have been raised. With all your intuitions about family dynamics and how to view and treat loved ones horrifically and possibly permanently miswired. It sucks watching the increasingly small demographic of well adjusted, family oriented peers you may have politely filtering you out and pairing off. It sucks getting older and realizing, you've been left behind with the other rejects, and now you've got to find the least damaged item in the returns bin to try to build a life with, knowing full well that's all you are to someone else as well.
I have no fucking clue how I did it. I have no fucking clue how anyone else is expected to do it today, except that it seems even more impossible, and the odds even more remote. But it sucks seeing all the "good ones" taken, and it hurts even worse realizing that goes for you too.
Yeah. And it's hard because so many damaged items in the return bin are still convinced they're the well-adjusted ones.
I think a lot about gambling apps in this context. There has been a lot of talk about them, how frictionless they make it to part with literally all your money. How if you actually do make money off them, they ban you. How, against the law, they personally call their worst addicts and entice them to gamble more. There is an argument I've seen made that if we are going to allow gambling, we need to add as much friction as possible to the experience to try to save people from themselves.
Similar care needs to be taken with those of us who end up in the returned goods bin. We don't need tiktok gassing us up about our worth, or dating apps dangling imaginary chads or stacies in front of our noses. We need examples of how non-broken people act in healthy, fruitful monogamous relationships treat one another, and maybe even the fear of god to scare us straight. Or something, anything. Just not this. Anything but this.
And possibly honorable life paths for perma-single people; there are some valuable, honorable economic niches that are hard on marriage and family. Not impossible - but hard. Long-haul truck driving, neurosurgery, stuff like that.
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It is indeed a pretty brutal and humbling realization. I knew exactly what you were going to talk about with the Christmas tree!
Having parents explode with anger at children is a terrible thing, and I pray I don't end up doing it if I'm blessed with kids. Except in rare circumstances, of course.
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