pencils down

today we went to some church lady's house in order to take the "so you think you want to get married" compatibility test. it was 150 questions, and we used number two pencils. we had to keep our eyes on our own papers, and the test covered everything from spirituality (of course), finances, trust, our feelings on child-rearing, arguments, sex, our parents' relationship, and how well we thought we knew each other. i had several giggling bouts during this test, which i attempted to cover up by saying to the church lady, "why, yes, i would like some more apple juice," but part of me was slightly worried that chris and i would completely fail. maybe we did completely fail; we won't get the results back for another month.

the questions were (mostly) in true or false form, with the answers ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree." here are some examples:

you are unable to sleep at night due to imagining your partner propositioning hookers on a street corner somewhere in east st. louis.

you and your partner are doomed to a life of financial hardships riddled with hot dog dinners and periodically having the cable shut off.

you believe that having children is the key to solving marital problems. in fact, you're pregnant right now, and every time your partner attempts to hit you, you scream, "but i'm having your baby!"

cocaine is clearly the answer to most of life's problems.

your partner would never go out and buy a 60 inch flat screen television without consulting you first, or at least playing dumb when you question him about it afterwards, saying, "but when you said no, i thought you were kidding!" you would certainly not take the remote control and jam it down the garbage disposal and then proceed to sabotage his social life by somehow getting him arrested for first degree mail fraud.

you believe you could never be happily married to anyone but your partner.

that last question was real. i asked chris about it afterwards, to see what he put down. "strongly agree," he proclaimed, and then i felt mildly guilty. see, i put down "disagree," because while "strongly agree" may be the romantic answer, "disagree" is the practical answer. plus, it's the one that keeps me from going crazy. saying "strongly agree" to that answer makes it seem that, if chris had never come into my life, i'd have been destined to sixty years of living with an apartment of stray cats. and then death. if chris had never showed up that night in the sushi restaurant, then i'd have eventually settled down into a loveless marriage with a periodontist. i can't imagine that. it's too depressing. unfortunately, i think chris was a little insulted, maybe hurt, at my answer. maybe i shouldn't have told him and then just waited to be confronted with it when the results came back. but doesn't anybody understand where i'm coming from?

i also felt a little weird about answering a few of the questions regarding my parents. there was one question that was ranked "never" to "all the freaking time," and the question was something to the tune of "your parents displayed abusive (physical, mental) behavior towards one another." the correct answer would have been "frequently," especially during my pre-teen and teen years, but i couldn't bring myself to answer honestly, not when this test is being scored by this nice church lady with all of the free apple juice. why does she need to know this? why does the catholic church need to know? chris knows. isn't that enough?

i answered, "seldom," and then moved on to the next question, where i promptly lied again and answered that, yes, i can do ANYTHING as long as i put my mind to it.

now, of course, i'm thinking about this, why this question was even asked. all of my parent's fights are still in me, of course, branded with fire and broken glass into my memory and subconscious. does that mean that my marriage will ultimately be abusive? or that, if i can't egg chris on to the point of slapping me around a little, i'll think that something is "wrong" with us? it's a pretty weighted, loaded question, and i've been mulling it around all day. to be brutally blunt, i am often filled with pride for myself, that i came from a house rife with dysfunction and a mental mother and a father who, for years, couldn't handle his anger any other way except to occasionally smash in his wife's face or leave her stranded at the k-mart with no ride home and then to throw beer bottles at her after the taxi dropped her off an hour later. i think to myself, "man, i'm pretty great for seeing all that and not ending up a complete fuck-up." i pat myself on the back and then reward myself with a hoagie. but maybe the joke's on me. maybe the joke's on chris.

i wonder if those tests work when you're not totally honest.

well, except for the family questions, i was pretty honest. and i was mostly pleased when i was done, noting that my first instincts generally told me that, yes, chris and i trusted each other, and, yes, we shared most of the same beliefs, and, yes, we're usually on the same page. there were a few questions about whether or not we wanted children, and, in the car, we compared answers. we had both put that we wanted two children starting in 2-3 years. so, watch out for that. i'm going to be one hell of a mother some day.

or maybe the joke's on me?