Despite rugged individualism's revered place in our national mythology -- as in the songs of Simon and Garfunkel -- most would rather accompany a lover to an island than be one. So we begin pairing up in high school, unaware of how many years will pass before a lasting pas de deux is ours. For some who've been at it for half a lifetime, patience has given way to urgency, if not anxiety. To them, the 30s seem equivalent to the last song of the high-school dance: they're marked by the manic search for a partner, lest one be left alone to wander the dark to the strains of "Stairway to Heaven."

And it makes me wonder.

While solitude emboldens a few lone wolves, more of us have a kinder, gentler regard for that curious entity called the couple. Mockery of the high-school-sweethearts-turned-happily-married-couple grows quieter. The duo now stands as a sign of possibility rather than an unwelcome reminder of the numberless dead ends and cul-de-sacs we've traveled. The barbs-cum-rationalizations are less likely to fly: something so easy must lack passion; we prefer our punishing highs and lows to the dull familiar; the rewards of the circuitous path trump the haste of the beeline. And our tune changes. Covetousness replaces the derision with which many of us once greeted the checklist life. Is an empty box alongside "spouse" and "family" really so terrifying? Has the world changed so much that the family has acquired conspicuous new importance? What the hell is going on here?

An unembellished scene that followed one of my recent Thursday-night hockey games:

Single Guy: "Hey, you want to head out for a few sodas [beers]?"

New Father: "No, I'll take a rain check. I want to get back home [and see my kid]."

Single Guy: "You know what the weird thing is? I'd trade my situation for yours."

Was that the tock of a male biological clock sounding above the hum of the Zamboni? How did this rake arrive at the tender wish for fatherhood? It's not simply a matter of seeking greener grass on the other side. Perhaps the indulgences of bachelor days and nights, the selfishness masquerading as freedom, have lost their charm. Maybe we laughed a little too hard and hastily when Kramer advised a befuddled Jerry that relationships are "human prisons." As Kafka once remarked, "You are free and that is why you are lost."

"Being a father beats down your needy part and makes you selfless," comedian Dennis Miller once told me in an interview. Unable to resist an allusion, he added, "Vonnegut said that the best day of his life was when his sex drive abated. He felt that he had got off a wild horse he'd been on since age 14. Having a child is akin to that -- it gets you off the ego horse." Many friends have left that horse in the stable to prepare for something more, well, stable -- a family.

Babies. That's what distinguishes the personalized holiday cards that remain on my refrigerator. Clad in their seasonal reds and whites, the bambinos smile widely at me as I return the Brita pitcher to its place alongside the leftover pizza. Gone are the shots of couples in exotic locales or staged high-jinks scenes wishing me a happy new year. In their stead: Junior. The cards, at times, seem like gratuitous reminders of Rubicons crossed: singleton, casual couple, committed couple, married couple, family. That checklist.

What is this gentle tyranny that surfaces as individuals find their path to coupledom, then family? Is my resentment nothing more than the fine whine of sour grapes?

No. Even the most generous take issue with the in-speak of couples who make too public their attempts at parenthood. "We're trying," they say, oblivious to the double-entendre. "We're trying," translated loosely, reads: "No more gratuitous shagging for us." Would that the dinner conversation ended there. No, with an MD's quiet authority they deliver reports of monthly cycles and optimal positions, the consistency of vaginal mucus, and the truth about sperm counts. "Waiter, please cancel that order of crème brûlée. Thanks."

Other couples temper the news that they are "trying" with a dash of humor, announcing, for example, that they've "pulled the goalie." But then they beat you to the puns. "Mark will shoot until he scores" and "We're gunning for a hat trick" are a couple of the quips that have tripped from the lips of a ribald wife I know. Small mercy: neither wife nor husband asks me about my wrist shot.

Co-authored self-involvement has its virtues, yet it also foreshadows another form of monomania: WKID-FM -- all baby talk, all the time. No poop or syllable is too insignificant to mention, no photograph unworthy of your time, no anecdote undeserving of a "well, that's just the cutest thing." To meet the new parents' gilded joy with anything less than delight is to play the misanthrope. You can almost hear husband grousing to wife: "As though he were never a child. . . . Wait till he's a father." And her consoling response: "He's just a lonely, bitter man."

Well, we're neither lonely nor bitter. We're just elsewhere. And we look on with far more wonder than weariness. As much as we enjoy Paul Simon's crooning and a few "sodas" after a hockey game, we know that days spent alone have their limits. And though we believed Oscar Wilde when he said that getting what one wants and not getting what one wants are the two great tragedies in life, we suspect that the former is preferable to the latter.

Yet it makes me wonder.

Ron Fletcher, who can be reached at ronfletcher@bchigh.edu, is not trying.

Issue Date: March 8 - 14, 2002