James married his sweetheart. There were two intra-class marriages from my year as well. If this is extrapolated across all years, it's quite an amazing number of people who married without ever going through the anguish of dating in your 20s.
My first reaction was that dating makes you stronger--it makes you appreciate more the person you finally meet. I have no doubt now that Jenine is very special, that it's bloody hard to find someone else with her mix of capability and humour. It certainly keeps me honest when dealing with other women--why boink around and threaten something so rare? Those poor highschool sweethearts--what happens when you turn 25 and suddenly get the raging thigh sweats for your secretary? How can you know that it's not worth the risk?
Then I remembered what Ben Franklin said: "Experience is the best teacher, but a fool will learn from no other." Someone paraphrased that to "a smart man learns from his mistakes, a wise man from the mistakes of others". Maybe these highschool instamarriage jiffi-quik-kouple McDowried folks aren't to be pitied after all ...
--Nat
