October 20, 2007

Weak Signal

I was out for dinner a few days ago with a number of my old MSA friends that I had not seen in several years. Among those present at the dinner, half of the group was now married, while the rest of us were all in various stages of transition from academia to the working life. The topic of conversation briefly moved to marriage, and the married folk among my friends insisted on offering their thoughts and feelings on what marriage means.

One offered up this analogy:

"Finding a wife ... is like finding a good cell phone plan. It takes a long time, but if you get the right one, it's ... very good."

He tried supporting his analogy with some examples, but I don't think anyone quite understood the point he was trying to make. Or maybe it was just me; marriage metaphors are just not my thing.

"I'm on a Pay-as-you-Go plan," I replied. "I don't think that would be quite ethical..."

The evening remained quite enjoyable, but the married folks eventually had to leave, unable to join the rest of us for the obligatory post-dinner Tim Hortons trip.

"Yeah, I should get back home," one said. "My wife called a few times."

One of my friends offered the following retort, which finally made sense of the absurd cell phone analogy.

"Oh, so I take it you've ran out of minutes?"

7 comments:

  1. Your blog is becoming home to various weird and wonderful marriage metaphors.

    You wouldn't find such metaphors on my blog... ahem.

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  2. Marriage metaphors? I don't know, that kinda humour seems so crass to me. :)

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  3. I agree with iMuslim... lots of marriage metaphors here. :)

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  4. Assalamualaikum

    It's alright brother Faraz...I think we both share a corny sense of humour. FYI, the 'minutes line' cracked me up. But really, I think we're seeing some positive signs on this blog :).

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  5. Hahahaha!
    I get it... the minutes line was pretty funny!
    Reminds me of the jokes my dad will crack with his friends when they're on the phone, and then my mom walks in just as he's saying something particularly "touchy". Then again, my mom is guilty of doing the same with her friends, too, so it goes both ways! :P

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  6. Nauman: You can interpret it however you like. It'll mean different things to different people.

    Shireen: Again, different things to different people! I'm just happy that people actually take out the time to read my irrelevance, regardless of what it's supposed to mean.

    Yusuf: The "minutes" line was indeed clever, but I still have no idea what my friend was trying to say about cell phone plans in the first place. It was quite a bizarre analogy, but I found it amusing regardless.

    Positive signs? Not quite sure what you're referring to.

    AnonyMouse: Hmm, seems a bit risky of your dad to joke around like that on the phone. And your mom too. But I'm sure they get along fine masha-Allah. :)

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