Calculated Risk

“Have you seen the marriage calculator?”

“Eh-wha?”

 

That’s me replaying 10 minutes worth of email from yesterday.  Thank you very much, my hunt and peck actors will return tomorrow for another performance!  Thank you and good night!

 

Marriage calculator.  Yup, it’s over at D360.  If you can glance up from the sultry bust shot avatars long enough to see the blue bar lounging at their head, then you can poke it and fondle the calculator.

 

Still staring at the avatars?  Then it doesn’t take a calculator to figure out your chances at marital success, although there is something to be said about your laser focus.  Go ahead, look up from the headless cleavage. 

 

Oh, you’re not even on the home page yet? You’re still on my blog?  How sweet!  Thank you.  Your dedication has just upped your marital points. You can calculate them in later.

 

Me?  Oh my dedication is in the gutter.  Yeah, I read the email and scrambled off to see the marriage calculator like a sailor on shore leave.  Well, marriage isn’t the need  he’s chasing, but you get my idea.

 

The marriage calculator is sort of like the Ouija board of the happily ever after world.  You ask it your “What are my chances of divorce,” and it’ll tell you based on some mystic criteria. 

 

S-E-E-K   C-O-U-N-C-I-L

“Oh, that’s not a good sign…Wait!  It’s still going!”

I-N-G

“Oh, thank God!  It just can’t spell!  My marriage will be fine!”

 

Yeah, your marriage will be fairytale bliss if you’re already consulting tea leaves and Jujubes   to uncover your fate. It’s like waiting in sleep for the man of your dreams.  Good luck with that.

 

Luckily the marriage calculator is more than that.  It takes the most prevalent data for those who stay married and calculates it into one percentage for your failure.  This data includes important stuff like education age and gender.  Yeah, gender.  Apparently men divorce more often than women.  I dunno, you tell me.  Marriage was always like calculus to me, and I only got as far as geometry.

 

That’s right, I know shapes like cones and hourglasses, but when it comes to proving how they work in real love, they’re just squiggly lines to me. Yeah, I know, that just cost me 5 percentile on my marriage calculator.

 

And that leads to my next question: when did D&D dungeon masters start figuring out divorce saving throws?

 

“Sorry you just failed you saving throw for panic because her lawyer has a vorpal briefcase of fear, +3”

“But I have a Jaberwocky in my pocket!”

“Sorry, it’s useless against estranged spouses, you need a spell of litigation…”

 

Yeah, I spent my time in a D&D basement.  I also spend my time in the marital doghouse.  I speak both languages.  What’s more, according to my marriage calculator I only stand an 8 percent chance of getting a divorce.

 

I rolled a 7.

 

Thanks D360!  I wasn’t feeling bad enough about my divorce, but now I see that I should still be married. How’s that for the cleric’s mace in the eye?  I called MyEx to confirm.

 

 

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Yes, of course it is…and you’re calling at 3 am because..?”

“I just wanted you to know that I found a marriage calculator that said we should still be married.”

“And yet we’re not.”

“Well no, but it says we should be.”

“uh-huh. And what are you saying?”

“I’m right and you’re wrong.”

“Great.  So what you’re telling me is that it didn’t calculate in that you’re emotionally 12?”

“No…am not.”

“Right.  And has your calculator been married to you for seven years?”

“No…”

“Right.  Well, call me back when it has.” Click.

 

So there ya go. My Ouija romance panned out like fools gold. It doesn’t take a psychic to tell who the fool is there.

 

Still, you get out what you put in. Mystic marriage mojo  isn’t omniscient.  It can’t see   everything.  It may know that I was 31 when I got married, but it doesn’t know that I’m an OCD passive aggressor who tells bad jokes.  Those things have to factor in somewhere—even Dionne Warwick’s psychic friends know that.

 

So what can the calculator do? It can’t predict the weather, but it can forcast a chance of storms based on previous history.  It’s like standing in the July Arizona desert and saying, “It won’t snow here today.” 

 

You could be onto something.  So is the calculator.  In knowing that, it may help you with some of your future decisions.  Then again maybe not, marriage is based on much more than a ticker tape of statistics.  Marriage is work.  Just because the calculator says you stand a better chance of pulling a rabbit out of your ass doesn’t mean you should give up the marital donkey. It just means you’ll have some struggles a head of you.

 

“Honey, have you seen the KY?”

 

 So what’s it mean?  It means there’s a new fun feature on D360 that you can play with. Use it how you will.  Me? I use it like the Bionic Woman’s sleep number bed, “Hi, I’m Rob and I’m an 8.”