Crying ‘Foul’ over ballpark proposals

THE VILLAGE IDIOT by Jim Mullen

Almost every day you see a news story about a guy who painted a mar­riage pro­posal on a bill­board next to a busy high­way, or pro­posed to his girl­friend on the Dia­mond Vision at a packed ball­game. It hap­pens so often that a love-struck man really has to do some­thing unusual now to make the evening news — paint his pro­posal on the side of a cow, carve his mes­sage of never-ending love in the mid­dle of a corn­field, or declare his love for his brother’s bride-to-be at the rehearsal dinner.

But here’s the ques­tion: Do any of these peo­ple stay mar­ried? Has any­one looked into whether these mar­riages work out?

I cringe every time one of these pro­pos­als pops up on a ball­park video screen, because I won­der what the guy is think­ing. It’s a good bet his girl­friend is not going to humil­i­ate her­self on cam­era by say­ing “no” in front of a big crowd, and he knows it. He is not ask­ing her to say “yes”; he is ask­ing a crowd of com­plete strangers to say “yes” for her. Can you imag­ine the boo­ing if she said “no”? Propos­ing in pub­lic doesn’t say “I love you” as much as it says, “I’m a manip­u­la­tive creep who will become your stalker if you don’t marry me.”

Ask­ing a father’s per­mis­sion for his daughter’s hand in mar­riage has unfor­tu­nately fallen out of favor. Now the suitor asks a sta­dium full of peo­ple for per­mis­sion. Who would know more about mar­riage than 20,000 peo­ple, many of whom have painted their beer bel­lies with the team’s col­ors? Cer­tainly not the bride’s par­ents or her pas­tor. What do those old fud­dies know?

Are ball­parks, sta­di­ums and corn­fields con­sid­ered roman­tic now? “Gee, honey, those $7 hot dogs really bring out the color of your eyes. Your hair matches the color of the gum I’m kneel­ing on, and your face is brighter than the adver­tis­ing on the out­field fence. Now that the ‘kiss­ing cam­era’ is on us, it’s like we’re star­ring in our own real­ity show. Who needs to work? We’ll become real­ity celebri­ties, and they make tons of money. Will you marry me?”

Then again, the guy may get what he deserves, a bride who says, “I will, if you promise not to get upset when I get, like, a gazil­lion Face­book ‘likes’ from every­one see­ing me on TV and you get only a few. That’s the way it is, so don’t get jeal­ous. Of course, if I get a few pro­pos­als, I might have to take a look at them and see if any are bet­ter than yours. Now that we’re celebri­ties, no one expects us to stay mar­ried very long, so we’ll have to sign a prenup to split the money from all the endorse­ment deals we’ll get. If that’s all OK with you, I will.”

Read­ers of his­tory know that mar­ry­ing for love is a new idea in world his­tory. In many coun­tries — India and China, for exam­ple — arranged mar­riages and dowries are still com­mon. Par­ents decide who will marry whom. Sounds pretty hor­rid and old-fashioned, doesn’t it? The odd thing is, the divorce rate is much lower in coun­tries with arranged mar­riage than it is in ours. How is that possible?

Well, sure, get­ting divorced is harder in those coun­tries, but why does it work at all? Is it because they expect dif­fer­ent things from a mar­riage than we do? What do a cou­ple of teenage love­birds know about build­ing a home, mak­ing a part­ner­ship work and deal­ing with needy chil­dren? How has decid­ing whom to marry based on “he’s cute” and “she’s hot” worked out? How many times a day do you need to hear the words “strug­gling sin­gle par­ent” in news sto­ries to fig­ure out that our sys­tem of roman­tic love is not work­ing any bet­ter for most peo­ple — and their emo­tion­ally bat­tered chil­dren — than the one it replaced?

But here’s the most impor­tant thing. I didn’t come to the ball­game to watch you pro­pose or kiss. Stop it!

(Jim Mullen’s newest book, “How to Lose Money in Your Spare Time — At Home,” is avail­able at amazon.com. You can fol­low him on Pin­ter­est at pinterest.com/jimmullen.)

Posted by Guest 2 Columnist on Aug 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.