A friend I’ve known for essentially my whole life got married early in March, after about a yearlong courtship and a 5 month engagement. He and his bride are quite the bubbly, happy couple. In fact, they’d been married barely a month when they announced they were expecting their first child in December, which prompted this response from an anonymous source: “That’s what you call hitting the first pitch.”
Marriage, I’m sure, has a way of changing people, in ways both subtle and obvious. My friend seems to have changed in at least a few noticeable ways. His birthday came on a Wednesday in late March and I went to talk to him after church that night because I had a gift for him. I kinda jumped into a conversation he was having with another guy, wherin he ended a sentence with the phrase, “that kinda sucks”, or something similar to that anyway. My jaw almost dropped because he’d always made a point to avoid using even the most seemingly harmless of potentially rude words, “sucks” in particular. In fact, I remember a Sunday when I was probably about 11 or 12 and having a lunchtime football conversation with some friends at church and his mother got really upset and told my mom when she overheard me say “sucks”, a word which, if memory serves, was preceded by, “Dan Marino”.
So it was, in its own way, shocking when my friend said that. I turned to the guy he was talking to and said, “did he just say ’sucks’”? My friend chuckled and responded, “Yeah. And I say ‘crap’ now too!” Hmm, where are his standards going? One day you get married, have your first kiss, and lose your virginity, then before the month is over you’ve started saying “sucks” and “crap”? Is there a pattern here?
Sportswriter Bill Simmons coined the term “I’m Keith Hernandez” status, which was named after a memorable scene in a legendary episode of Seinfeld. In the scene, pro baseball player Keith Hernandez goes out on a date with Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and it ends with the following bit of dialogue:
ELAINE: Well, thanks for a nice evening. It was really fun.
KEITH: Yeah, it was. [mind] Gosh, should I kiss her good night?
ELAINE: [mind] Is he going to try to kiss me?
ELAINE: I love Cajun cooking.
KEITH: Really, you know my mom’s one quarter Cajun.
ELAINE: Uh, my father’s half drunk. ha ha ha ha
KEITH: Maybe they should get together. [mind] Go ahead. Kiss her.
I’m a baseball player dammit.
ELAINE: [mind] What’s he waiting for? I thought he was a cool guy.
KEITH: [mind] Come on I won the MVP in 79. I can do whatever I want to.
ELAINE: [mind] This is getting awkward.
KEITH: Well, goodnight
ELAINE: Good night
[they kiss - REALLY KISS]
ELAINE: [mind] Who does this guy think he is?
KEITH: [mind] I’m Keith Hernandez.
Thus, “I’m Keith Hernandez” status is reached when an athlete, beloved by the fans and possessing of great skill, reaches a ridiculous level of self-confidence and believes that he can do anything – especially things that lesser athletes couldn’t get away with – and it will be okay because he’s a superstar and he can do that. Just like Keith Hernandez saying in his mind, “Come on, I won the MVP in ‘79. I can do whatever I want to.”
In a similar vein, a newly married man might start doing things and saying certain things unashamedly that he never would have done before, thinking “Come on, I’m married. I’ve left my father and mother and I’m leading a new family now! I’m free. I can say whatever I want to!”
After a lifetime of shying away from saying things as mild as “sucks” and “crap”, he’s suddently started using those words. He’s a prolific photographer and he posted several Facebook albums worth of pictures from his honeymoon trip, one of which included a picture of his wife holding up (and giving a thumbs-up to) the book Sheet Music: Uncovering the Secrets of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage. Not a hint of awkwardness there on his part, and even his sister responded with “good grief”. And this week he announced his wife’s pregnancy by posting a picture on facebook of her positive pregnancy test stick, predictably prompting comments like “ok, that’s gross”, “wow…?”, and “Err..yeah…that’s…yeah…”
Has this whole marriage thing totally gotten to his head? Should we call this “I’m leading my own household now” status? I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with any of those things in the previous paragraph, but it just goes to show how marriage might give you a sense of freedom and strip you of a lot of awkwardness and inhibition you had before. That being said, I hope I don’t suddenly become that open after getting married, whenever that ends up happening.
