Funny coincidence...

So earlier tonight Kristen called. I never know what to expect when I talk to Kristen, but it's always good to hear from her. I have an easy time making her laugh, and I enjoy the topics that come up. It's funny, I never seem to run out of anything to talk about when I talk to Kristen, and I usually find the things she says fairly interesting. However, I never really look FORWARD to talking to Kristen. I don't see Kristen as any ideal mate. It just turns out that chatting with her goes pretty well. Go figure, huh?

Anyway, we're both 23 now, and we're both witnessing a LOT of friends getting married and/or moving away with someone right now. However, she's a bit picky (and a bit forward) about her dates, and she's in medical school too, and I'm ... well, I'm me... so we're both not exactly in this "first wave" of newlyweds. So I describe a new theory I was thinking about that helped explain why we observed lots of people getting married now, a lull, and then lots of people getting married later. I think I referred to "first wave" men and "second wave" men, and also extended this theory to women.

It basically had to do with two types of people. More specifically, it had to do with two types of things that people believe about themselves:

1. (type 1) If you find the very perfect person right now, it is best to change the rest of your life to make sure that you can be around them. The sacrifice is worth it. This is an opportunity you can't pass up.
2. (type 2) It's best to find the perfect life for yourself first, and then once you find it, you'll find someone else also living the perfect life. You and that person will be extremely happy as you won't feel you're making major life-altering sacrifices to be with each other. You're able to be with each other and be yourself, and if you make sacrifices, you're making them because you want to make them.

Well, that's the idea in a nutshell. Therewas much conversation. Kristen was saying that type 2 people are actually type 1 people, just type 1 people who take a while. So I guess I renamed them "content" (type 1) and "picky" (type 2)... (and internally I felt like Kristen was someone who desperately wanted to be "content" right now but was relegated to "picky" by circumstances)

ANYWAY, it turns out that if this is modeled as a "first wave" (type 1) and a "second wave" (type 2), I was saying that the "first wave" is around 23 and the "second wave" is around 28. Kristen thought 28 was funny, but I explained that it was just an expected value (a mean), and I was actually just estimating an expected value, so my expectation itself has variation, and thus 28 isn't necessarily dead on where the "second wave" hits...

So tonight I read this on a blog from a girl describing a night out she had with a guy, who is apparently Indian. She writes:

[ from I haven't really been out in a few months by Ms. Persimmon Kumquat on Pardon the paranoia, please. ]

. . . It seems as though it doesn't matter who a girl is, but if she walks in at the right time she'll be the one. Very unromantic. There was another theory I heard too: that guys can only marry at age "24" or "34"-- as in, they'll marry right out of school because they're ready to marry their sweetheart, OR they'll marry in their mid-thirties when they realize they're running out of options. This theory was quickly knocked down, because this one guy believes the timeline is quite different with Indian guys. Indian guys tend to hit the "34" mark earlier, at around 28-29. . . .

posted by ms. persimmon kumquat at 3:21 AM

So I thought that was pretty funny, as I think it starts to explain the same observations that Kristen and I were talking about just earlier tonight... However, it's a different explanation for those observations though...