5 Years

I want my five years back. I know, I know, this looks like some kind of "tribute to love", but really, no. I want my five years back. Five years I could have spent playing online role-playing games at my dad's apartment, eating chicken cordon bleu from Arby's, with the curly fries and the Arby's sauce, staying up until 5 a.m. and sleeping until 4 p.m. and thinking about maybe going back to grad school next year but not actually filling out any applications or even looking at the websites. What have I been missing? These are things I think about every day on the way to work.

Mostly the Arby's.

Instead, here I am, five years down the rabbit hole, clean shaven like 70% of the time, neatly dressed and gainfully (sort of) employed, with my waking hours during the day and my sleeping hours in the night, never lonely, and what's more, a little bur running around, regularly expecting to be fed and walked.

I really never thought it would turn out like this. Well, I can't say I thought it would turn out in any particular fashion (I think maybe I thought I would have evaporated into the ether by the time I was 28), but certainly not like this. This is all very much a surprise.

Okay, okay, fine, a beautiful surprise.

But listen, don't let it go to your head.

And on the way home from work, when I'm not thinking about Arby's, I'm thinking about you and my bur, and how when I get home she'll very slowly open the door with a silly grin on her face, and maybe nod and say "Daddy ohm" before running back to her Elmo DVD and ignoring me when I try to grab her for a kiss.

And while I'm sure I would have had plenty of children over the last five years of my online role-playing adventures, most of them would have really been adults with severe social anxiety disorders. So you win again, baby. This was a really good idea.

What's funny and a little strange, though, is that while this has all been completely unexpected for me, I can't really see it being any different. That we're married and a family seems a given. It just is. And it's weird that people like us, married and a family, would ever stop being married and a family. Conceptually, I understand it, but emotionally, it's foreign, even though we both grew up with divorce. Either this is good news for us, or I am in for another big surprise.

So five years doesn't really impress me, because I know we're going to be that old married couple that dies within a week of each other, assuming nothing unlucky happens before then. I think we can probably do 75 years, what with the wonders of modern medicine and the powers of vegetarianism.

So here's to 6.6% in the bag. I love you!

Josh