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Many people recall with pride how they carried their brides across
the threshold when they got home from church and wedding reception.
Newly married couples today refuse to do it. They say engaging in
superstition is a waste of time. But it was a good practice with
practical benefits, and young couples don’t know what they’re
missing.
Carrying your bride is a good way to start a
marriage. The threshold is the starting line for you and your
wife’s physical development in the coming years. If you repeat the
carrying process after a number of years, you will know the big
difference, especially when you reach your silver and golden
anniversaries.
After a number of years, the former bride is
probably 50 pounds heavier. Your once muscular physique is gone. You
are flabby and overweight and slow moving. Carrying your 200-pound
darling across the threshold is a big challenge.
If you and your wife think ahead, you would
probably make some necessary preparations. She makes an effort to
control her weight, while you go to great lengths to keep in shape
so you can carry her in your arms with tenderness as you did many
years ago.
But if you cannot pick her up in your arms, what
are the alternatives? Will the wife agree to some adjustments?
You can plead, for example, to carry her
piggyback instead. Or, you sit her in your shoulders and pretend you
are a carabao. It is not romantic, but it’s effective.
You: “This is the way young people do it in
modern times.”
Wife: The carabao does not represent modern
times. And you are as old as your carabao.
If the wife insists that you carry her across
the threshold in your arms, you are doomed. It will require super
human effort and the consequences of failure are not pleasant.
Because of your age, you may hurt yourself
bending down and picking up something heavy. Even if you succeeded
to pick her up, you have to get her across the threshold, which now
look like a wide chasm. With your 200-pound darling in your arms,
you step forward. With grim determination and with eyes bulging from
the effort, you take several more steps. Sweat runs down your face.
Gasping for breath, you finally get through. After putting her down,
the wife says, “Thank you, darling.” It’s not a walk in the
park.
“Thank you darling” is not all you get, of
course. You gain experience and the difficulty would force you and
your wife to get into serious preparations for next year. It will
promote teamwork, which can lead to better relationship.
The wife carrying practice should be revived to
help couples maintain romantic ties that bring about a happy
marriage. It helps the couple guard against overweight. When the
wife indulges in her favorite chocolates, you stop her by saying:
“Please remember I will carry you across next year.”
One way to revive the practice is to hold a
national wife-carrying contest every year. We offer attractive
awards to couples, but the opportunity to check their capabilities
to meet the challenge when the moment arrives is enough incentive.
If we get better we can compete in wife carrying
contests that are now a popular sport in Australia, North American
and Finland. We excelled in other sports, no reason why we cannot be
the best in this field.
In the First UK and Ireland Wife Carrying
Championships, men staggered to victory recently with their wives in
their arms. Eight couples fought it out through four heats. The
final one was around an obstacle course, which included a water
jump.
Don’t think that the wife or girl friend is
there just to enjoy the ride. Several of them got dumped on their
heads and a few more were thoroughly drenched. The rules allow three
types of carrying: piggyback, fireman’s lift and the curious
Estonian style where the wife hangs upside down with her legs around
the husband’s shoulders, holding tight to his waist.
In the UK vs. Ireland championship, the winning
couple used the Estonian technique and completed the 240-meter
course in 1.38 seconds.
The contest offers effective techniques to
husbands who are in hurry to cross the threshold and get on with
their silver or golden wedding celebration. If the wife refused to
walk, you can carry her. If it’s a challenge to pick her up in
your arms, you use the Estonian style and get across in no time. And
you can shout with joy, “Happy Anniversary.”
palaciosjp@sss.gov.ph
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