Tuesday 28 May 2013

Canadian Shotgun Wedding

It's finally time to tell the true love story of how my husband and I came to be married.  Why?  Because I made an entry about it in Urban Dictionary!  That's right.  I have just contributed to the English language for posterity.  You're welcome, future generations.

Traditionally a shotgun wedding involves an actual shotgun with an angry father of a newly pregnant bride.  Like the American Revolution it quickly changes the lives of those involved with lots of drama and excitement (as well as potential/actual casualties).

The Canadian shotgun wedding on the other hand, happens a lot like how Canada became independent of the Queen: gradually, over time, in a rather boring way with no drama, guns, or casualties.  Many people, even Americans, are Canadian shotgun married every day so I felt that it deserved a name with a definition in a bona fide dictionary.  Yes, Urban Dictionary is a totally legit dictionary and yes, I need it because I'm an old.

The Canadian shotgun wedding is practically expected in my family.  One of my uncles used to joke that our family crest should be two beer bottles crossed over each other between two separate beds because, "First comes the drink, then the sex, then the baby, then the marriage that puts an end to all that sex nonsense so you can start drinking again."

My husband and I were Canadian shotgun married in the truest sense of this newly invented yet time-honoured tradition: we conceived Frick approximately three weeks after we started dating.  Seriously.

So here's the story:

The first time I met my husband was actually a few months before we started dating.  I was out on a first date with a guy I met the week before.  We went to a club and met up with a bunch of his friends and one of them was my future husband.

I was introduced to my future husband by my date and we shook hands.

I love studying human faces.  I have a habit of paying close attention to people's faces when I talk to them.  I noticed that my then unknown future husband had remarkably beautiful eyes.  Large, bright blue, wide-set, heavy-lidded with thick black lashes.  I remember at the time having a passing thought about how, if we should for some reason procreate, I would like to have those eyes passed on to our children.

And then I thought, "Now that's a weird thought."

And then I proceeded to forget all about him.

Obviously things didn't ultimately work out with my date.  But we're still friend now so that's pretty cool.  My husband hangs out with cool people.  Most of the time.

Fast forward about four months.  It was midnight in the middle of summer and I had just finished working my shift at my shitty McTaco Chicken job.  I was 24 years old so it was way too early for me to go home but also kind of late to make plans with anyone.  I headed down to The Village, knowing I was bound to run into at least one of my many friends there.  (I wasn't always an antisocial hermit.)

When I got there I did indeed run into a friend and hey!  He's with that guy with the pretty eyes I had that weird baby-making thought about.  And I was single.  My friend reintroduced us and we went to a pub for some drinks.  Future Husband and I hit it off and started seeing each other.

Now don't misunderstand.  Just because I had a random procreative thought about this guy did not mean I wanted to get pregnant.  I was way too busy having fun and going to college and starting a career to be wanting anything like a baby, or even a husband for that matter.

But we were young healthy adults who liked each other a whole lot so we were doing what young healthy adults who like each other a whole lot often do in these modern, sinful times.  And we were totally, totally using protection.  It's just that 98% effective is not 100% effective and we were the lucky winners of the Statistical Probability Lottery.

We were both pretty freaked out.  I was mostly freaked out that I would be responsible for another human life and I was going to get fat and how was I going to afford this?  But I was 24 and a little tired of partying all the time.  I was almost finished college anyway and I was older than my Mom was when she had me so I figured I could do this.

But it must have been worse for him.  He had just turned 20.  He was still living with his parents and his job was as crappy as mine.  And holy shit!  He got a girl pregnant!  There go all those carefree, wild oat-sowing early 20's.  I told him I wouldn't pressure him and I understood if he wanted to back out.  I knew what I was doing and I knew I didn't want to deal with any baby-daddy drama so he was off the hook if he wanted.

And at first I thought he did want to back out.  A couple of weeks went by without me hearing from him.  I figured he had booked.  Then he called me up, seemingly out of the blue, and said, "I got a new job.  Give your landlord notice.  Me and my sister and my friends are renting a place together and you're coming.  Let's play house."

Turns out the new job he got was working nights loading airplanes for a courier company.  It was long hours of back-breaking work which made it hard for him to be awake enough to call me.  He had been spending most of his available waking hours working on figuring out our living situation instead.

We've been "playing house" ever since.  I went from liking him a whole lot to falling deeply in love and he fell in love back.  When Frick was about 6 years old we were playing so nicely together we decided to make it official.  Which was nice since yet another form of birth control failed us and we got pregnant with Frack a month before the wedding, allowing me to carry on another family tradition: Pregnant at the Altar.

And so we were Canadian shotgun married and everyone was cool and nobody made a big fuss aboot it, eh?

1 comment:

  1. I love this story SO HARD! I have three little wonderful "accidents" (all birth control babies). I almost got "Canadian shotgun married," with the last one, but then realized that the effer had too much crazy to offer me. That one lasted for seven years. We just split up, and now I'm looking for my next "Mister Right," who will inevitably be some kind of psycho.

    Kudos for falling in love and making it work! I'm sorry of jealous that you had something to contribute to the urban dictionary with an actual "thing." My entries on anything usually only pertain to me. Not an entire country...

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