As a single, I view marriage differently than my hitched friends. The conditions of this institution leave me baffled. Perhaps the seemingly complex interactions of two persons should not shock me so much, but they do.

 

What dizzies me? The little things that set two people spinning. Someone says something off the cuff, or without thinking, or not at all. The resultant frustrations amplify themselves out of proportion. I feel like when I was a child, and I could never see the pop-up T-Rex in those squares of orange and yellow that looked like squares of orange and yellow. “I just don’t see it,” I used to say. “Magic Eye” was never magical to me.

At some point in our childhood, we hear a story about a bird. Why we hear this story, anyone can guess. Perhaps one generation feels the need to illustrate problem solving for the next.

The bird (a raven or a crow) grows thirsty. To his delight, he discovers a jar of water. To his dismay, the jar is half full. He has both a beak too short to reach and no hands to lift the jar to his mouth.

Ever a shrewd animal, at least according to the fable-tellers, the crow or raven begins to drop rocks into the jar. With each drop, the water level rises. The rocks move the water up to the thirsty bird’s mouth. The presence of the stones displaces the water.

“You have two options,” he said, “chocolate or vanilla ice cream. Which do you choose?” 

 

“Chocolate,” she replied.

He asked why, and then she gave her reason.

He repeated his initial question: chocolate or vanilla? Her answer came with a different reason. They repeated this back and forth twenty or so times.

Finally, having asked “Chocolate or vanilla?” and hearing the response “chocolate” once more, he again asked why.

“Because I choose chocolate! That’s why.”