On Being an Island

Pizza, always. Chinese, no problem. Burgers, occasionally, depending on where you live. Wonder why nobody delivers Mexican food?

A good business idea would be a medium-sized fresh food grocery that sold smaller portions. Single people don't want to have to buy eight Kaiser Rolls when they're just gonna grill one hamburger of an evening, or large bags of lettuce for one salad, or great huge bunches of fruit regardless of plans, only to end up throwing half or more away.

Ladies night, fine. Fan appreciation night, no worries. But why are there no discounts about for single heterosexuals? In fact, one finds the opposite for single heterosexuals: a distinct prejudice. We, individually, wait far longer on line at restaurants, for the rarely available "table for one." We have no concession stand discounts, despite the fact that we require much less packaging, and make far less mess than the most fastidious family of eight.

We are the bastion - the sole remaining bastion, and hope, for the Judeo-Christian way of life. Yeah, sure, homosexuals can adopt kids and, I'm quite sure, raise them to be fine, upstanding, productive citizens. But without heterosexuals, there would BE NO KIDS TO ADOPT.

Despite a 50% divorce rate in America, we are considered less stable to prospective employers. Except, perhaps, for the military, who seem to think we would be good battle candidates, obviously having nothing to live for, nothing to lose. Sorry. Wrong.

And forget "honeydew" lists. Single people are the honey, and the dew. We have to find the time to do everything - work, shop, clean, cook, stay home to meet the cable guy, return all phone calls, handle all repairs, appointments, crises.

We have no one to blame when something gets broken. We have no one to blame when we're late, or wrong, or stupid, or pick the wrong tie. We have no drop-back-and-punt excuses when we don't want to go somewhere (well, my wife won't let me play poker tonight) -- we just have to suck it up and find some other lame lie when we just want to stay home.

And maybe, the worst of all - Halloween. In my experience, most domestic couples, perhaps unconsciously, rotate the duty of greeting the parade of costumed candy junkies, many of whom are old enough to have already served hard time, and dutifully playing the age-old Glucose Terrorist Gets Grilled Before Scoring game:

"And what are YOU supposed to be?"

"I'm supposed to be meeting my parole officer in ten short, so look slippy with the goods, ah ite?"

It's a painful chore, but one ameliorated by sharing the chore between spouse and spousette. Not so, on Planet Single Person. Single people have to answer each doorbell's chime, endlessly, endlessly, endlessly. Finally, we just rip out the doorbell.

I'll need to add fixing the doorbell to my honeydew list. Eh, honey? Honey?