Marriage Is Not An Option. Yet.

 

I had just come into the classroom and found the rest of my female classmates hunched over HotMama and her laptop as she perused over some girl’s pictures one by one which she had posted in her Friendster profile.

 

“Hey, who’s that?” I asked curiously as I took a peek at what has been keeping their interest.

 

“A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend,” HotMama answered.

 

SoSexy beamed when she saw me. “Hey, you should’ve been here earlier. We were looking through the girl’s wedding photos. They were amazing. You would’ve loved it.”

 

I heard the word “wedding” somewhere in the statement and I cringed. I cringed all the more when she said that I would’ve loved it. It was too early in the day to start ranting madly about marriage so I, of course, ignored what she said. I figured, it’s the girl thing. It is assumed that as a girl, I’d be mooning over wedding pictures since most women my age in general cannot wait to get married.

 

Just to make it clear, I am not in a hurry to get married. I will only consider marriage if I have invested at least one year in a relationship with a man who will continue making me laugh even when we’re both 80 and whom I am sure will never make me have any doubts at all that I settled for something less just because I was afraid of spending the rest of my life alone.

 

But of course, I didn’t tell her any of these – lest I look defensive – and I just smiled.

 

Anyway, a couple minutes later, HotMamasat infront of my desk as she started reading her book. She then looked at me. “So, when are YOU going to get married, [mistress]?”

 

I thought I had heard her wrong. “Excuse me?”

 

 

 

“I don’t seem to remember saying that I was getting married anytime soon. I haven’t even found the right person for the job.”

 

“What about your current boyfriend? Aren’t things serious between you and Philip? And by the way, when are you going to introduce him to us?”

 

“HotMama, I don’t see my relationship with him as the kind of relationship that will eventually lead to marriage. Hence, he’s not worthy enough to be introduced to my friends. Plus, even if he turns out to be a serious long-term kind of thing, I don’t exactly want to get married yet. At least not when I’m still in school.”

 

“Oh, come on. Seriously.”

 

“I’m serious, HotMama. I don’t want to get married yet.”

 

“But [mistress], you’re not getting any younger.”

 

Oooh… how sneaky of her to bring up the age card. I finished college in five years and delegated a year trying up pass my licensure exams, looking for a job and volunteering at a local hospital so basically, I was about two years older than most of my classmates. This also made me one of the oldest and unmarried females in the class.

 

Does this mean I’m supposed to just settle for anybody willing to marry me because I was nearing 30? I. DON’T. THINK. SO.

 

“HotMama, I kind of have a few things in my plate that I still want to do before I settle down, like move out of my parent’s house, buy a car, travel, that sort of thing. Whatever gave you the idea that I can’t wait to finally get hitched?”

 

At this point, she was looking at me like I was weird and I had grown horns at the top of my head or something. I decided to take the focus out of me instead by bringing up my other classmates. “If anybody’s excited to get married in here, it would be Darna and SteroidsGirl. They are the ones who’ve been seeing their boyfriends exclusively for like, almost forever.”

 

One of our other classmates, BabyG, must have heard our conversation and so, she decided to join us. “Speaking of getting married, SanBedaGirl is getting hitched this December.”

 

This made all the girls in class go, “Oh, wow!” It was obvious that none of us knew that oneof  us in the class was actually getting married soon.

 

“I’m one of the bride’s maids,” BabyG added.

 

We started congratulating SanBedaGirl, who, as always, just smiled shyly and did not say any word. Everybody started becoming excited. It was, after all, going to be the first wedding of someone from our group. And in the middle of reviewing for the board exams, at that.

 

“So, I guess we’ll all be eating plenty this December,” Darna remarked.

 

“Yeah!” I exclaimed. I love food. So Sue me.

 

“No dieting in December, I suppose,” HotMama said. Some of the girls in class have been cutting back on their food intake since our currently sedentary lifestyle were apparently making them gain more pounds.

 

“Of course,” said BabyG.

 

And then another one of our classmates, FEUGirl, added her own two cents worth. “I’m so excited to get a taste of the wedding buffet … Oh, wait! Are we even invited?”

 

I laughed so hard I practically fell off my seat. She had a point. SanBedaGirlwas a bit aloof and did not come from the same school as a good majority of us did, hence, she only talked to a selected number of girls. Even when we’ve been talking about weddings infront of her face, she did not say a word at all about her upcoming wedding and neither did she actually invite us, even when we started congratulating her. We were all just so excited about her wedding that we automatically assumed that we were.

 

I slapped FEUGirl’s hand, “Nice one, FEUGirl!”

 

She laughed along with me.