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August 18, 2005
Attention Russian Women: British Men are the BEST...no really they are!
A few days ago, my dad and I decided to venture out to a local Southern California golf course. When we reached the first tee, we met our playing partners, two gentlemen from England. After engaging in the standard amount of small talk, we learned that one of the men was on his honeymoon. His wife was seated in the driver's seat of his golf cart, a fact that came as a total shock to my father and me because the girl whom we saw sitting in the golf cart looked like she was a daughter, not a wife (yes, I realize it's possible to be both a daughter and a wife, but I'm tired and you know what I mean, and if you don't know what I mean, you're a complete idiot). Although many men marry younger women, this particular younger woman looked like she still could appear in a magazine published for pedophiles. Needless to say, what appeared to be a gigantic age discrepancy between the husband and his wife was all that my father and I needed to morph ourselves into Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson for the remainder of the afternoon to solve the great mystery.
On hole number two, my dad officially started the investigation. "Where did you meet your wife?" he asked. His tone seemed genuine, but to my trained ears, I realized that my dad's simple words really meant, "Where did you meet your wife, a daycare center?"
"I met her in Russia," the English chap responded. "She was doing some translation work for my company and I just knew right away that she was the one for me."
"Is that right!" my father replied. "So she's a mail order bride?" we thought (at least, I definitely thought that)!
"Russian women absolutely love Western men," the English man remarked. "You see, Russian men treat women horribly whereas Western men are actually nice to the women and treat them really well." The comment actually made sense. After all, who doesn't want to be treated well in a relationship even if it's by a person from a completely different generation? Plus, we've all seen documentaries about Russian men kidnapping Russian women and putting them at the bottom of wells until they kill and skin the Russian women. Actually, I think that was the plot for Silence of the Lambs and although the movie has no relevance whatsoever with this post, is it ever wrong to mention Silence of the Lambs? It's only one of the greatest movies of all time and for anyone who hasn't seen it, (cough, cough, GE Friend), you really should rent it, especially now that Blockbuster has eliminated late fees, which means you get to keep the movie forever with no consequences, right? Oh wait, only idiots think that you can pay four dollars at Blockbuster and keep the movie for eternity and in keeping with the running theme of this blog, idiots should not procreate. Back to Silence of the Lambs, can someone explain to me how Buffalo Bill put the women at the bottom of the well in the first place? There was that bucket that he always lowered to pass lotion to his victims, so it's possible that he lowered the victims down to the bottom of the well using the bucket, but his victims weren't exactly anorexic models. In other words, I just don't think the bucket could support a human being, so I'm wondering how the women got to the bottom of the well in the first place. He might have just dropped (i.e. thrown) them down there, but then he'd risk the victims dying (from the fall) before he had a chance to get their skin in perfect condition. Anyway, for all of you who know more about putting people at the bottom of wells than I do, please pass along a tip or two. (I'm guessing this applies to at least one or two of you.) Because this paragraph got slightly derailed, let me summarize the paragraph's main point: according to the groom, Russian women love Western men because Western men are nice and Russian men are douche bags. There! Moving on. . . .
In addition to gambling on every single hole, my dad and I spent the first nine holes trying to guess the bride and groom's ages. My dad remained committed to the notion that the bride was probably a teenager while I held out hope that she was in her young twenties (color me an optimist!). At several junctures, my dad exclaimed, "I'm just going to ask him how old she is! That's the easiest way to find out!" I always countered, "Can you at least wait until the last hole so it's not completely awkward all afternoon?" Seriously, can you imagine that conversation? "By the way, English chap, my son and I were wondering if you're committing statutory rape, a strict liability crime, by consummating your relationship with your young Russian bride. How old is she?" It is true that the question could be posed in a manner that would be less offensive, but I think the groom would have seen through my father's words had he asked him that question. And of course, there is the marital exemption to statutory rape, so technically, the English chap could have deflected on those grounds.
On hole number nine, my dad had a moment of brilliance. Instead of asking the groom his wife's age, my dad asked the groom's friend! When he wants to know something, my dad is very sneaky and can divert a conversation in a way that allows him to ask a question without seeming like he had wanted to ask that question initially. I don't remember how he framed this particular conversation, but needless to say, "How old is his wife?" was uttered pretty quickly.
"Twenty," the groom's friend replied.
"Twenty?" my dad exclaimed, pretending to be shocked beyond belief. "Wow, don't tell her this or else she'd get really mad at me, but I thought she was thirty!" My father's words almost sounded convincing. Keep in mind that the only way anyone could think this girl was thirty was if a person happened to be suffering from some severe degenerative eye condition or was just flat-out blind. In other words, anybody who thinks this girl is 30 would also think that I'm tan.
"Thirty?" the friend exclaimed. Clearly he thought my dad had been sincere with his comment, but what was also clear was the fact that the friend was astonished that anyone could think the bride was older than 10. "She was getting carded religiously in Las Vegas," he added.
"And how old is he?" my dad questioned.
"He's 34," his friend replied.
At some point during the day, we also learned that the newlyweds had been dating for 2.5 years (you do the math to figure out when they started dating). Clearly this wasn't your typical Russian mail order bride arrangement. They actually knew each other before they got married and if Russian men are so bad, why shouldn't a Russian woman find love with a Western man?
Let's backtrack to hole number four for a second. We had gone the first four holes without the young bride ever having set foot out of the cart. As most people know, golf can be pretty boring even if you're playing (though not with my family because you never know when a club will become temporarily planted into the earth or when some new combination of swear words will be laced together for the first time). If you're not playing and are just sitting in a cart watching amateurs play, well that would even make an insomniac be able to sleep during the middle of the day. With that information in mind, I approached the groom and said, "I just wanted to let you know that your wife is more than welcome to join us on the green when we putt or join us anywhere else on the course for that matter. She's got to get bored sitting in the cart all day."
"That's mighty kind of you to say," the groom replied. "I didn't want to presume anything."
After that brief conversation, you would think that the bride would start abandoning the cart from time to time to join us on the green while we putted, yes? That's what I thought and I suspect it is what you are thinking too. Well, like me, you are WRONG! For the remainder of the day, the twenty-year-old only left the cart under three scenarios. First, she left the cart when her husband hit his ball into a sand trap. This happened quite frequently on the final nine holes of the round. The bride would rake the sand after her husband hit his ball. (I can't imagine a Russian man allowing his wife to do such a fun thing.) Second, she would leave the cart when her husband forgot a club. "Putta," he would snap and the "putta" would appear. (Again, imagining a Russian man allowing his wife to leave a golf cart to bring him a club is simply something the mind cannot comprehend.) Third, the twenty-year-old left the cart once when her husband sent her on a suicide mission to fetch his golf glove, which the idiot had left behind on a prior hole. The groom told his wife to cover as much ground as possible, but didn't warn her that she might get hit by flying golf balls. Nice. Even the groom's friend expressed sincere concern over the bride's safety at that point. And although I have no evidence of this, I'm pretty certain that when the two had some private time together, the groom beat the living crap out of his young bride and blamed her for his crappy golf round. But, like me, you should not be concerned because the bride is living a truly blessed life. After all, she gets to be with a Western man who treats her like royalty and who actually lets her leave the golf cart to run personal errands for him when he takes her to play golf on their honeymoon. It just doesn't get better than that.
All this leads me to ask one simple question, "Just how bad ARE Russian men???"
