What’s up with this marriage thing?

Lots of my friends are doing it.

Lots of my cousins are doing it.

Even my twin brother’s doing it.

Me? Nope. I just don’t get it. What’s more, nobody can explain it to me.

I tried asking people. Didn’t work. I tried research. All I got was a definition.

“Marriage is the state of being married. It’s the relation between husband and wife. It’s married life. It’s wedlock. It’s matrimony,” my good friend Webster said.

But this helps me not at all. I want to know how you know you want to be married. I want to know when you should get married. I want to know what happens when you’re married.

And I want to know why it seems like everybody knows these things but me.

It’s like I’m back in fifth grade and the cool people just conveniently forgot to call and tell me that parachute pants had ceased being cool the night before. I was left clueless.

Alas, it is again.

No one can tell me why my brother (He’s tying the knot in June, by the way, to the girl next door.) is fit for marriage and I’m apparently not — not yet anyway. The funny thing is that the absolute worst person to ask that question of is my brother.

“You just know,” he tells me in this tone like I’m straight off the Tinker Toy plantation.

Then I get smart.

“Well if that’s the case, Mr. I’m About to Be Required to Make Late Night Runs for Tampons, how come I don’t know?” But he just laughs and tells me to go tinker with my toys.

I never liked him anyway.

Even my friends of the most traditional order of bachelors are hooking up — even Tim. Somehow, no matter how bad things got, everything was right with the world because Tim didn’t have a girlfriend. But he’s got one now.

I just found out yesterday. It really threw me for a loop. It’s like everything I thought was sacred just got thrown out the window. How could he do that to me?

And I’m still no closer to understanding this weird desire among my relatives and friends to pair up and presumably ride off into the sunset.

In fact, it’s getting worse.

Take my brother again. He’s a good looking guy. (And of course I don’t say this only because he happens to be my identical twin brother). He could date. He could be one hell of an eligible bachelor.

But no. He has to go off and sign his life away for a girl. And what’s gonna happen in June? What’s gonna happen to me? He says things won’t change that much. I think he lies. He won’t be one of the guys anymore and he knows it.

He won’t want to do dumb things with me anymore, I’ll bet. He won’t want to stay up late at night drinking Dad’s beer and talking about people behind their backs, I’ll bet. He won’t even want to come visit me anymore, I’ll bet. How could he not have thought of my feelings before he proposed?

Somebody told me the other day that my brother and all my other soon-to-be-hitched or newly hitched friends and relatives get brainwashed by marriage.

“It sucks them in and makes them think they really want to watch girl movies,” some guy at the bar said right before taking an hour-long hiatus to visit the toilet.

Now this at least answered my questions. But I’m not so dumb. I know this probably isn’t the whole story, because if it was, then why hasn’t this marriage thing started sucking me in yet?

Maybe it has something to do with me meeting the very strict requirement of not having a girlfriend. I’m betting that fits into the equation somewhere.

I would have asked the guy at the bar this, but he never did come back. Come to think of it, I really should have checked on him. Oh well.

I guess I’m doomed to ignorance on this one. My brother says I’ll never understand this marriage thing until I do it. But I just don’t think I’m ready for tampon runs yet.

I don’t even know how much they cost.

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Chris Miller is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Marshalltown. He is editor in chief of the Daily.