Okay, I think we can all accept that I’m probably never going to get married. I lead a practically monastic lifestyle and I’m anti-social to levels just short of where I’d have to start doing murders. But still, thoughts enter my head from time to time when I see other marriages that make me wonder what it would be like for me. Plus, I gotta find something to put up on this damned website, right? So this here is a message to my Future Wife. You probably don’t exist, but this guide still does: What to expect if you marry PDR.

Okay, Future Wife, somehow you’ve found yourself in a position where you think marrying PDR is a good idea. Probably a disease wiped out most of the dudes on Earth or whatever. Whatever the cause, you have somehow seen past all the annoying neuroses, childish thoughts, and general stupidity that surround PDR and you mistakenly think he’s an okay guy beneath it all. Well, I’ll not argue that right now (there’ll be time after the honeymoon), but I will offer some other advice that you can use.

PDR don’t wedding. I don’t want a big wedding. I really don’t. I have mentioned this previously on the site and I still stand buy it. If you want a marriage with PDR, he’s okay with that. If you want a wedding with PDR, he is less okay with that! There’s probably some leeway in here, I admit. I’m willing to compromise to an extent since, it is my understanding, some people are close with their families and would want them involved, but that’s about as far as I can go. The ideal situation for me would be, us, the marryer person, and I think we need a witness or something? Well, okay that’s not the totally ideal one, it’s just realistically ideal. The totally ideal one would involve wizards that give us powers so that we can become a crimefighting superhero couple. But the odds of that are so ridiculous that they’re slightly more unlikely than me getting married to begin with.

Also, another tradition I’m going to go against: Don’t take my last name. I assume you’ve got a last name, Future Wife. Unless there is something tangibly wrong with yours, why would you want to go and change it after decades of living with it? And if there is something wrong with it, you had decades where you could have changed it without getting me involved. And think about me, too. I don’t want that. I don’t want to have to learn a new name for some person I apparently like enough to marry. Keep it simple. The bottom line is this: I’m not conquering some undiscovered land here, Future Wife, I’m making allies with an already peopled land. Do you get it Future Wife? Do you understand metaphor Future Wife? I do hope I won’t have to always resort to simile for you. That would be frightfully boorish.

While we’re on the topic of nomenclature, Future Wife, please don’t refer to me as “hubby” either in conversation with me or when talking to other people. For some reason it is a term that doesn’t sit well with me. I can tolerate being called most things. If no variation on my name suits the situation, there’s a million other things that I’d accept first. The usual pet names like “Dear”, “Sweetie”, “Your Holiness”, “Asshole”, “Fuckhead”, “Dickless”, “Hey Idiot”, “You Grandmafuckingcockstrangler”, “I HATE YOU AND IF YOU DIED IN A FIRE WITH A MILLION BABIES AND GOD OFFERED ME THE CHANCE TO TURN BACK TIME AND PREVENT THE FIRE I STILL WOULDN’T” or “Honey” are all good. “Hubby” is just in this weird zone of vagueness and formality. I like to think of the husband role as being secondary to us being friends, Future Wife. So address me as a friend instead of as a husband. Or something. Anyway, I don’t like it.

Switching gears entirely: I’m nocturnal. Granted, at the moment I’ve got an excuse that I’m that way for work, but I really can’t see myself ever wanting to fully make the transition back to being a full-time diurnal person. I no longer get the headaches I got for years during the times when I was in school or worked days. I think this is because I’m really supposed to be a night person. Don’t worry, though, Future Wife, I’ll still have time for you. I assume you’ll work during the days during the week, so I can sleep while you’re at work and have dinner ready when you get home. And on weekends you’ll have nice morning hours free from my odious presence until I wake up in the afternoon and we can sup on sunlit verandas then dance the night away to our heart’s content*. In many ways my being nocturnal is way better for us, Future Wife. So don’t try to change this. It’s what is right.

(* I will not actually dance the night away)

Eventually we’ll probably have kids, Future Wife. That seems to be what married couples feel like they have to do, even though if they really thought about it they’d realize “hey, maybe let’s don’t do that” but whatever, we probably will. Such is the nature of hypothetical scenarios. Here’s the thing: If I were a single parent my kids would not be raised to celebrate Christmas. This, of course, makes me the villain in most movies. I know, but this is who I am. But that’s irrelevant anyway! You, Future Wife, assuming you’re not stupid enough to die and leave me alone with Future Child, are going to be there too, and I think it is very likely that (unless you’re both non-Christian and non-secular in which case how did we get this far without me somehow insulting your religion?) you probably do the whole Christmas thing, so I will acquiesce to you. I will try to instill this one day with a level of joy I don’t think it can really contain at the detriment of joy that could be found on other days if you want me to. Just don’t expect me to be enthusiastic about it. I reserve the right to complain about every dumb holiday decoration, every stupid holiday obligation, and especially any Christmas song, and you don’t get to be surprised or hurt. Because I laid this down early and plainly. Got it? And if you die, I’m stealing Christmas from that kid, you better believe it! Hahahahahaha!

Ahem. Finally, and perhaps most important: No racist hate crimes. All hate crimes that we commit as a married couple shall be motivated by class. This is non-negotiable.

Now, it isn’t my intent to start putting pictures of myself up every post or anything, but since I was once again unable to sleep this morning I figured I might as well go and get my hair cut, since I’ve wanted it done for like a month now. When the hair-cutting was finished up, the haircutter person asked it I wanted my eyebrows trimmed. I’ve never got that before. I wonder if my eyebrows are getting bigger…

Now I know that I have thick eyebrows. They’re such a dominant feature on my face that if I were to mess with them, I think I’d not recognize my own reflection. And then I would miss all the opportunities to give myself flirty winks every time I pass a window or a mirror. And I need those flirty winks, thank you very much. My eyebrows stay as they are.

Also, if I can barely be bothered to care about the rest of my facial hair, why start caring about those.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m bad at conversation, but I certainly wouldn’t say I’m good at it. I’ve known people who are really good at anecdotes and I am not one of those people. They really seem to enjoy telling stories and know how to do it well. I, on the other hand, consider oration a constant struggle to hide how easily I trip over words or get lost in meandering tangents.

I could probably get better with practice, I’m sure, but then we come to my second problem: I bore myself. It’s true that even in my purposefully boring life I still do things (or have things happen to me) which could be amusing when retold, but here is a fact: The more often I talk about something, the more it bores. And this doesn’t just apply to the anecdotes either. The default thing people talk about when meeting people is jobs, right? Well, (ignoring how much I hate my job to keep the example easy) I quickly grew tired of telling people what I do for a living. But when I found out my actual title (Nighttime Post Press Production Supervisor) I enjoyed working that in when they asked (always sure to include the fact that for years I didn’t know my own title), but soon I tired of that one too. The hypothetical person I am speaking with would find this information new, but to me it has become tired. If you’re not, like, one of the first three people I’m talking to about something, the odds are that I have lost all excitement for it, and that’s bound to hurt the quality of my conversation. (From the other side, I really don’t enjoy if a person is talking to me about something they’ve told me before. I assume that since they don’t tire of their anecdotes, they probably keep them in rotation, so when they forget that I’ve heard it, out it comes again. I guess it’s fine if I’m only hearing it for the second or third time, but I’ve had people repeat the same things to me more often than that and it grows weary.)

Related to that, I can’t be bothered to fill everyone in on the details I need for my anecdotes and stuff. I already know what I do for a living, so when I want to tell someone about something that happened at work, for example the time I lost a fingernail because I got a hand caught in a machine (all anecdotes are about injuries, right?), I go off the idea as soon as I realize that I would actually explain what I do, what the machines are like, and how I used to have a fingernail. All that is taken for granted by me, and thus bores me (see above). So the result is either a weak telling of the anecdote and the details, a telling of the anecdote that suffers from lack of details, or just skipping it altogether. Thus, the more often I see and speak to a person or the more common knowledge that person has on a subject, the surer my footing on the cliffs of speech (metaphorically). And this also carries over to other things. At a couple of the jobs I’ve had I’ve been made to train other people. I hate that. I hate having to go over that stuff. Specifically because it is work, it is such a routine that it goes way beyond a story I’ve told a few times. It’s something I’ve done daily for a depressing number of days and talking or thinking about it just makes it so much worse. I will never enjoy training someone unless they already know everything I’m supposed to tell them.

I do, however, consider myself a good listener. Apart from that bit about people repeating themselves, I like hearing what people have to say (that may be why the repeating themselves bit is so annoying). This, of course, places the burden of the conversation upon my hypothetical conversing partner, which (with some exceptions for people who don’t mind carrying the conversation) again weakens the whole thing. And that’s why the best of all options for me is the be in a larger group of people having a conversation. I get to listen to the back-and-forth and chime in if, at any point, I actually have something I think could be interesting. Of course, there is the constant threat of people who will take my silence as a bad thing and try to directly bring me in. I’m sure their intentions are good (trying to make me feel like part of the group, as if that has ever been a PDR goal), but it just brings me back to the awkward attempt the get my brain to catch up with my mouth of a regular conversation, only now I’ve got a bigger audience.

So there you have it. Another look into the workings of my finicky hermit of a mind. I can and do enjoy talking with people under the right circumstances, but those are some pretty specific circumstances. Otherwise, why can’t we just enjoy the silence together, eh?

Anyway, that is just talking. With written conversations, I have more time to deal with my sentences and sort my thoughts. Sure there are the pitfalls of typos, forgetting words, overuse of parentheses, and all that, but generally I can get my points across much easier. And when I’m tired, I tend to just ramble on and on and on. Like this has been.

Why can’t I get to sleep? I’m totally tired. Come on, body! You’re supposed to know how to cover this part.

So, today is my thirtieth birthday. How about that?

Generally I, Patrick D Ryall, do not bother celebrating my birthday, (and today is no exception apart from this post, really) because age is just a count of how many times the Earth has gone around the Sun since I got born and that isn’t terribly relevant to me. Sure, years are a useful unit of time measurement, but they really don’t mean anything about me as a person. And yet, even with that in mind, there are some things that can be inferred by my turning thirty: The primary being that I’m no longer in my Twenties. I’m now a Real Adult, instead of a New Adult. Or something. I’m in a different category than I was just days ago, is what I’m saying. I don’t know what the categories are called.

Sure, I’ll grant you that today’s society has pushed back Real Adulthood much further than thirty. People probably say things like “Fifty is the new Thirty” so I’m supposed to rejoice that I’m not old. All the thirty-year-olds in movies are likely to be overgrown young people and many in real life seem take their cue from that. People crave their youth, for whatever reason, so they’re constantly pushing the societal definition of youth higher and higher. But not ol’ PDR. I don’t care about aging, really. Some people fret about it and can’t believe that they’re getting old. And you’d think that someone who has been as concerned with his mortality since such a young age as I was would worry, but I don’t. Getting older has more than enough benefits to make PDR okay with it.

For one thing, I have never fit in with my age group. Not when I was a kid, nor a teenager, nor any other time. I never knew the popular trends of the day. I am always late learning about what shows are popular, I never know anything about music, and I have worn the same style of clothes (t-shirts, jeans) no matter what fashion does around me. Now, obviously, my age group is still my age group. They’ve all grown up with me. So my not fitting in with them will continue. But we’ve all continued aging away from the Young People of Today and they’re the real popular culture now. That’s what is so sweet. Someone in their Twenties? They’re generally still expected to be somewhat hip. But I’m in my Thirties, now, so I’m free from that! As I said above, Thirties are still considered pretty young these days, but the difference between me and some teenagers is now so insurmountable that my never speaking to one who isn’t a cashier is perfectly fine. When I hit my Forties, I’m pretty sure, is when I’m actually allowed to be wholly alienated by youths, so I’m ahead of the game there, but I’ll take what I can get. I’ve been an old man in my head since I was around fourteen, so this is just my life is finally catching up.

I’m also lucky that there won’t be any “Holy Crap, I’m Thirty Now” shock for me. I’ve thought of myself as a thirty-year-old since I was twenty-eight. Why? Bad memory, I guess. But in any case, I’ve been calling myself thirty for years in my head (and occasionally out loud when people ask me my age and I don’t want to do math or remember what year it is) so I’ve already moved on to being, like, thirty-three mentally. If, at any point, I genuinely am caught off guard when my age occurs to me, it’s because I’m actually younger than I am.

Naturally, round-numbered ages are a good time to take stock of your life and see how you’re doing. And it’s times like this I notice that I am nowhere near getting married, having kids, buying a house, and winning a position of great social status and material wealth. But I wasn’t aiming for that stuff anyway. There’s some stuff in that list that I’d be down with, but for the most part these goals are just things we’re peer pressured into thinking are important. I’ve not deigned to base my life around achieving any of them. The unfortunate flip-side of this, however, is that I’m also not achieving much in the way of PDR-mandated goals. I’ve not done nearly so much travelling as I’d like, my writing output is improving but is still less than ideal, and I’ve not overthrown the currency-worshipping culture we live in. Perhaps the most alarming thing I do get out of turning thirty is when I remember that I started working my current job when I was twenty-one. I’ve wanted to quit for at least eight years, but I haven’t because I can’t think of another way to not be homeless.

But in the end, I can take that sense of failure as I turn thirty, because I had that same sense of failure when I was twenty-nine and before that. But now I can more liberally use phrases like “When you get to be my age…,” “Back when I was young…,” and “Kids these days…” I mean, sure, I used all of those already, but now it is slightly more justified. And in the end, that’s what aging is about: It’s a license to be as cantankerous and ornery as you want.

Okay, I wouldn’t have thought that this would ever be something I needed to clarify, but I am now stating, for the record, that I, Patrick D Ryall, am not Batman.

Almost without fail, any time I wear my T-shirt with the Batman symbol on it in public, I will be called “Batman” by somebody I don’t even know. The only possible information I can infer from this is that the only difference between me and the real Batman is the symbol. I mean, who am I to judge? I’m used to my face because of the hours I spend daily examining while I swear at myself in the mirror. Other people who see me only once or twice on the road don’t know the subtle differences between me and Batman that I do.

To help everybody learn, I’ve created an image that you should all print out and post in store windows, elementary school classrooms, and synagogues.

I mean, the only other alternative would be that people are just stunningly unoriginal and think that calling a person in a Batman shirt “Batman” is fresh and exciting. But that would speak poorly of the general populace, so that surely can’t be it. If that were the case there would have been a decade of people saying “Run Forest, Run” every time they saw someone running.

(Actually, there was this one time when I was walking down the road and some guy who was selling something called me Batman as he tried to get me to check out his wares. When I said that I wasn’t interested and didn’t stop he protested something like “Aww, but Robin did” which did amuse me.)