You see, I grew up in the time when the internet didn’t exist; we had fashion catalogues back then that most people called cut-looks from not knowing any better. These catalogues had different names and people didn’t always have to suffer the use of that generic term catalogue, except when they were being unnecessarily fancy where they’d end up saying something like I saw a nice dress in the Ebony cut-look ; You all remember the magazines; Ebony, Mahomedy’s, Kansas City, Sonny Boys and others. These magazines were for many people portable stores showcasing the latest trendy fashion; for me, they were the best places to enjoy the spectacle of the world’s most gorgeous women. I’m certain I am speaking for every guy who was a boy during my time when I say our first crush on a woman was on the gorgeous cut-look women.
We were helpless over those women; we all just wanted to grow up fast, get a good job and marry them. Those women had all kinds of tempting things about them; the beautiful eyes and lips that drew you to them; the body figures that made you wonder about many things who you knew were not appropriate for children; very often we were tempted to kiss them. Yep. I’m not ashamed to admit that we actually did more than just kiss them at times, but that’s a subject for another day.
It is from the many years of being in awe at the women in cut-looks that I slowly built a woman I wanted to marry in the future; the intelligent mish mashing of the best things I saw from the different women in those magazines that I hoped to grow and find in some woman who I would marry, have three kids with and live happily ever after.
I am a man now, and looking back on my life I can’t say I have been too lucky finding my woman. At my age I ought to have found her and well advanced in that dream of a wedding like no other. That said, I am not about to compromise just because time seems to be running out. We all know that life just doesn’t hand you things on a silver platter with you just sat on your bum. I am not about to give up on the kind of woman I want to marry just because people say I have set a standard too high. There are many people today stuck in marriages with people who are clearly not what they grew up dreaming to marry. People who ended up with the people they married because they exerted unnecessary pressure on themselves, perhaps out of the impression that time was running out and what people would say when they were not married at their age.
You see, that is where people get it wrong. Marriage is a very grave thing to contemplate, and while many people will tell you that one almost always never ends up with their high school sweethearts, that it is just the way life is- I think it is a horrible thing never to try hard enough until you realize your dream. There are many people who have married the wrong person; poor things who their parents have tried to motivate and say persevere but only to make themselves suffer more in the process. You have seen families in which things are so bad that you have caught the husband and wife exchanging glances so searing you could feel them wishing each other dead! Yes, those are the type of couples where one of the two just took the plunge with the wrong person. This is why the marriage institution is down on its knees these days. People just give up on themselves, pursuing wrong dreams and end up with aliens from unknown planets.
Unlike some pretentious Christians, I tell people that there is no point being in relationships that do not work just because there is a doctrine discouraging divorce. I understand the thing about Jesus having been in hell worse than any man would ever know. But sometimes people kill themselves trying to be Jesus in marriages. Jesus was different you see; he was the father, the son and the holy spirit, and the last time I checked, no one in his likeness has remained ever since. Plain human beings like you and me have a breaking point, and they could never rise on the third day if they do not take the decision to divorce and start their lives anew.
I have decided I will take all the time I need in the world until I found someone suitable to marry. I will marry when I want and when I am ready! I want to marry someone who I will wake up next to many a morning and look at her when she is no looking at me, and feel I have made the best choice…just like how I used to mish mash in cut-looks. What is the point of wasting your life with someone who gives you enough worry and doubt, and proves untrustworthy time and time again? Isn’t it the Tswana who said a jackal never loses its old habits?
