Bronwen and I agreed to a mar­riage pact, where we would mar­ry each oth­er if we weren’t in a rela­tion­ship by a cer­tain age. The thing is, she’s six years younger than me, so we decid­ed that her expi­ra­tion date is 35, and mine 41, because it’s eas­i­er for men to date/marry than women, at an old­er age.

Note how I did­n’t say “easy”. Heaven knows I had a hard enough time with dat­ing in my teens. And twen­ties. And prob­a­bly 30s.

According to her, we also have a sui­cide pact, even though I have no rec­ol­lec­tion of this. The only rea­son I can think of agree­ing to that is if large parts of the world were destroyed by mete­ors, lead­ing to the col­lapse of the eco­nom­ic sys­tem, cre­at­ing anar­chy, and reduc­ing every­one to hunter-gath­er­ers.

Bronwen and I are most cer­tain­ly not hunter-gath­er­ers, and we’d prob­a­bly suf­fer unbear­ably just try­ing to sur­vive, or be killed soon after because we’re too naive or com­pas­sion­ate for a dog-eat-dog world. The thing is, if that hap­pened I’d try to join forces with Pat and Jen, because they always have every­thing togeth­er¹. So maybe if they were also killed by this cos­mic hail­storm, then it would still be an option.

1. Pat’s the one who believes that at least one per­son should be in con­trol in every group at all times, and that he is this per­son. The only time he was ever ine­bri­at­ed was for his bach­e­lor par­ty. [↩]