No White Dress for Me?

My 10-year-old brother, Yusof, joined his school kompang team at the beginning of this year and since then he has been banging out his kompang beat on everything hittable from the bathroom door to tables and -- if he is being particularly annoying -- my back.

One day while riding home (me, from work; my siblings, from school) he was at it again on the car door. Not being able to move away from his incessant drumming, I started to become agitated.

"Enough with the banging," I said exasperatedly. "Nobody is getting married here,"

"He's practicing for your wedding!" said Adam, always eager to torment me.

"Yeah," my dad, no better than Adam, pitched in excitedly. "It's only about 2 more years -- once you're done studying and start working,"

I cringed -- Adam noticed. And so for the rest of the ride home, they made jokes and snide comments on my allegedly soon-to-be-held marriage. Maybe it was because of the taunting, but I even surprised myself at how much the idea of getting married revolted me.

I have to confess, like every other girl, I've dreamed and fantasized about getting married happily. Yet somehow, when the idea seems so real and plausible, I find myself shying away -- no -- hightailing as fast and far away as my scrawny butt can manage.

In my fantasies, I don't need to give my imaginary husband a personality. It's just me fulfilling the duties of a wife; -- and here comes another confession -- the conventional kind whom is content to stay home and cook, clean, and read to the children (with the sole exception of instead of watching soap operas in my free time, I spend time with my playstation). However, in reality, husbands are more than a present ethereal entity. I have to choose one. And the choices that present themselves don’t exactly get my hormones stirring. Men -- the ones I know -- are largely uninteresting, unmotivated, dependent, clingy, jealous creatures.

Hey, I don't want to be right. Believe me. But I'm not going to fool myself into believing that I'm wrong either.