Back West

Everyone's gettin' hitched.

All these kids from high school keep getting different last names on facebook, posting wedding photos, announcing engagements, sending wedding e-vites, and makin' babies.

It's specifically the Oregon bunch, too. Sure, a couple here and there from Oberlin (not that I can think of any specific couple at the moment*), but every time I log onto facebook, someone else from high school is tying the knot or poppin' out a little person.

I should be used to this, considering one of my good friends got married when we were still 18 and popped out a baby boy at 20, and goodness knows I have this innate biological urge to do the same, but it still shocks me to see people my age wearing a big white dress and giving vows. Shocked because the years are passing so fast, and it is nearly starting to be that time.

Honestly though, I think I'm more shocked at the boys my age getting hitched then I am the girls. Little girls daydream of big white flowery weddings, of walking down the aisle with their fathers, of big frou-frou dresses and lipstick (for me, it's all about the merry widow, don't need more than a courthouse to wear one either). But not these boys, all I've encountered (with one or two exceptions) are commitment-phobes that have a deadline in their head to the relationship. I declare shenanigans!

The boys in Oregon seem less flighty. Maybe it's because Oregon brings out the parenting instinct. I don't know how it does it, but it does. It's one of those places you want to raise babies in. All that nature, clean air, good schools, little houses, no sales tax, happy little homes with happy little lawns, happy little fences, and happy little trees. Not that I'm ready to raise babies, nor that I want to wait as long as my parents did, I'm just sayin' Oregon = settling down. Or maybe it's just the severe lack of it in New York City that makes Oregon stand out in such contrast. Not that there aren't an incredible amount of young couples with baby bjorns in my neighborhood that look just a couple years older than I. I don't know where I'm going with this anymore. The only point I wanted to make is that all these kids from my high school in Oregon (and NOT New York) are settling down with college sweethearts and the like, and it surprises me but also warms my heart.




*UPDATE: M&E. duh.