it’s like the dentist
unpleasant sometimes, but lots
have been there before
Adapted from a passage by Stephen Vincent Benét in the short story Everybody was Very Nice as published in the book Thirteen O’Clock by Farrar & Rinehart in 1937.
That last is the salient note here.
Published back in 1937.
Feeling this way, back in 1937.
“Oh, it was a lot simpler in the old days,” he said. “Everything was for marriage — church, laws, society. And when people got married, they expected to stay that way. And it made a lot of people as unhappy as hell. Now the expectation’s rather the other way, at least in this great and beautiful nation and among people like us. If you get a divorce, it’s rather like going to the dentist — unpleasant sometimes, but lots of people have been there before. Well, that’s a handsome system, too, but it’s got its own casualty list. So there you are. You takes your money and you makes your choice. And some of us like freedom better than the institution and some of us like the institution better, but what most of us would like is to be Don Juan on Thursdays and Benedick, the married man, on Fridays, Saturdays and the rest of the week. ” and he grinned.
For myself in this passage, divorce is incidental.
It’s that cry of Oh, it was a lot simpler in the old days.
Someone once said something along the lines that each generation has to discover the 10 commandments for themselves.
Maybe I always understood this to mean the original 10 commandments.
Maybe instead, it means, each generation has to discover the 10 commandments … for that generation.
Only that’s a bit hard to work out, somehow.
At least in this great and beautiful nation and among people like us.
It’s rather like going to the dentist — unpleasant sometimes, but lots of people have been there before.
Thou shalt not press send?
No Haiku For You 