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A match made in heaven
I got married at 34. I remember thinking that I was ready to look for a wife and settle down. At that point, I met a very convincing ex-banker turned philosopher who sold me her theory.
Finding the perfect partner wasn't about chemistry or chance; it was all about plotting areas of compatibility on a graph. It was a compelling sales pitch - simply list your priorities in a number of defined categories, get a match, and hey presto, you're set for life. Family values - check! Financial values - check! Physical compatibility - check! Religious values - kind of... and so on.
I bought the theory, used the graph, and found myself divorced a few years later. Luckily though, I have the graph to blame rather than any fault of my own.
Summertime, and the living is easy
Summer is a great time: loads of family bonding, and weeks on end of seeing various young children running around, having fun and causing mayhem.
In my case, nearly all of the 13 grandchildren will be spending some time with my parents in the middle of rural France. There will be laughter and tears, along with a few broken pieces of my mother's best crockery.
Some of the grandchildren will laugh at Grandpa's jokes; compliment Granny's painting; lift the loo seat; play cards; brush their teeth when told; eat their vegetables; be nice to their siblings; and maybe even say please and thank you unprompted. And of course, some of the 13 will do none of those things.
As a parent you're pretty sure that all of these behaviours will get charted, subconsciously or not, by the all-seeing grandparents.
Records of wrong-doing
In my case, everything gets logged in Granny's mammoth computer. The results will then be downloaded onto Grandpa's older machine and analysed endlessly.
Does any of this matter? A bit, I suppose. As a parent I'm kind of nervous and excited about where my gang end up on the list. I'm expecting one - if not two - podium finishes, and I'll be disappointed if they end up scrabbling around with the back-markers.
But, in reality, will their final holiday positions on Granny's graph effect their future happiness? Of course not.
I dream of a world where parenting and marriage graphs are banned, and children cause merry mayhem instead. Especially when they're not staying at mine.
Ben Black
