The Twelve Percenter Gets Married

So we finally did it! I had gotten to that point where I’m convinced to within an acceptable margin of error that he loves me and I tied the knot. To have and to hold, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, etcetera and so forth.

If I had not been perfectly certain of my own sanity, certain to a degree that normally is only found in people who have concluded that they're definitely Julius Caesar and have been sent to save the world, I might have thought that I was going mad.

You know how every time the newspaper or TV people do a survey, no matter what the question, twelve percent of the public can not commit to an opinion? Well I’m a twelve percenter. And us twelve percenters, we all have one thing in common: we’re like giant compasses that swing aimlessly for a long time, seeking some true north and then homing on it with terrifying force. Before that happens though, guys like us are apt to get up to some weird shit. And I was no exception. Didn’t matter if they were ministers or murderers, or murdering ministers, every new boylet was Lucy holding the football and promising this time for sure, and I was Charlie Brown, rushing down the field to kick it. Consequently, I’ve always had a general fear of thinking in terms of PTA’s and furry pets and Sunday dinners. Marlon has vowed to visit just such a fate upon me and at the ripe old age of twenty-five and one sixteenth, my uterus skipped a beat and I said yes.

It was one of those mornings, so perfect you keep expecting to see that little trademark symbol ® stamped on it somewhere and I had on this gorgeous emerald green dress. I had to wear a strapless bra but it was worth every wire digging into my ribcage. “I thought you were gonna wear that white swishy thing,” Marlon asks. I refused to answer that on the grounds that it didn't fit.

At precisely nine o clock, I found myself hyperventilating at the claustrophobic Judge’s chambers, calculating my escape routes… uh in case of course of uhm fire or er, urban unrest. The solemnizing Judge spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

And when we came to that part that goes Do You Accept The Other For Your Lawfully Wedded Spouse? For my own reasons, I agreed, for his own reasons, he did not object.

After that, we filled in some blanks and voila!
I was, then and thereafter, the proud owner of a shiny, brand new, five foot six, 145 pound, 220 IQ, lawyer slash husband unit (batterries not included).

*** later that day ***

Mrs. Yap: Will you still make me coffee now that we're married?

Mr. Yap: Nope, now I'll only make them for myself (silence)…
But by Philippine law, you will own half of it.

*** much, much later that same day ***

Mrs. Yap: So what happens now?

Mr. Yap: Well, at some point there will be a taking off of clothes.

Mrs. Yap: No, I mean what happens next? In our lives? When do we get a car? And a microwave oven? No, wait, I mean, a boat and a puppy. Or babies. Little pink wriggly babies... I have a list somewhere.

Mr. Yap: Hmm… we've got the rest of our lives to plan the rest of our lives…