Text: “Family Life”

Marriage is a thing which only a rare person in his or her life avoids. True bachelors and spinsters make up only a small percentage of the population. Most single people are “alone but not lonely”.

Millions of others get married because of the fun of family life. And it is fun, if one takes it with a sense of humour.

There’s a lot of fun in falling in love with someone and chasing the prospective fiancee, which means dating and going out with the candidate. All the relatives (parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, stepmothers and stepfathers and all in-laws) meanwhile have the fun of criticizing your choice and giving advice. The trick here is not to listen to them but propose to your bride-to-be and somehow get her to accept your proposal. Then you may arrange the engagement and fix the day of the wedding.

What fun it is to get all those things, whose names start with the word “wedding” – dress, rings, cars, flowers, cakes, etc.! It is also great fun to pay for them.

It’s fun for the bride and the groom to escape from the guests and go on a honeymoon trip, especially if it is a wedding present from the parents. The guests remain with the fun of gossiping about whether you married for love or for money.

It’s fun to return back home with the idea that the person you are married to is somewhat different from the one you knew. But there is no time to think about it because you are newly-weds and you are expecting a baby.

There is no better fun for a husband than taking his wife to a maternity home alone and bringing her back with the twins or triplets.

And this is where the greatest fun starts: washing the new-born’s nappies and passing away sleepless nights, earning money to keep the family, taking children to kindergarten and later to school. By all means it’s fun to attend parents’ meetings and to learn that your children take after you and don’t do well at school.

The bigger your children grow, the more they resemble you outwardly and the less they display likeness with you inwardly. And you start grumbling at them and discussing with your old friends the problem of the “generation gap”. What fun!

And when at last you and your grey-haired spouse start thinking that your family life has calmed down, you haven’t divorced but preserved your union, the climax of your fun bursts out!

One of your dearest offsprings brings a long-legged blonde to your house and says that he wants to marry. And you think: “Why do people ever get married?”

Ex. 1. Read and translate the text.

Ex. 2. Answer the questions.

1. The text is written with a sense of humour, isn’t it? Do you agree that family life is fun?

2. Is your family life happy?

3. How would you describe your family life?

Text: “My Own Rules for a Happy Marriage” (abridged) by James Grover Thurber

Nobody, I hasten to announce, has asked me to formulate a set of rules for the perpetuation of marital bliss and the preservation of a sacred union. Maybe what we need is a brand-new set of rules. Anyway, ready or not, here they come, the result of fifty years spent in studying the nature and behaviour, mistakes and misunderstandings of the American Male and his Mate.

RULE ONE: Neither party to a sacred union should run down, disparage or badmouth the other’s former girls or beaux. The tendency to attack their character, looks, intelligence, capability and achievements is a common case of domestic discontent.

RULE TWO: A man should make an honest effort to get the names of his wife’s friends right. This is not easy. The average wife keeps in touch with at least seven old classmates. These ladies known as “the girls” are often nicknamed: Molly, Muffy, Missy, Midge, Mabby, Maddy and so on. The careless husband calls them all Mugs.

RULE THREE: A husband should not insult his wife publicly, at parties. He should insult her in the privacy of their home.

RULE FOUR: The wife, who keeps saying, “Isn’t that just like a man?” and a husband, who keeps saying, “Oh, well you know how women are,” are likely to grow farther and farther apart through the years.

RULE FIVE: When a husband is reading aloud, a wife should sit quietly in her chair, relaxed but attentive. If he has decided to read the Republican platform, an article on elm blight, or blow-by-blow account of a prize fight, it is not going to be easy, but she should at least pretend to be interested. She should not break in to correct her husband’s pronunciation, or to tell him one of the socks is wrong side out, swing her foot, file her fingernails, catch a mosquito. The good wife allows the mosquito to bite her when the husband is reading aloud.

RULE SIX: A husband should try to remember where things are around the house so that he doesn’t have to wait for his wife to get home before he can put his hands on what he wants. Perhaps every wife should draw for her husband a detailed map of the house, showing clearly the location of everything he might need. Trouble is, he would lay the map down, somewhere and not be able to find it until his wife got home.

RULE SEVEN: If your husband ceases to call you “Sugarfoot” or “Candy Eyes”, or “Cutie Fudge Pie” during the first year of your marriage, it is not necessarily a sign that he no longer cares or has come to take you for granted. It is probably an indication that he has recovered his normal perspective.

RULE EIGHT: Two persons living in holy matrimony must avoid slipping into the subjunctive mood. The safest place for a happily married couple is the indicative mood, and of its tenses the present is the most secure. The future is a domain of threats and worries, and the past is a wasteland of sorrows and regrets.

I can hope in conclusion, that this treatise itself will not start, in any household, a widening gap that can never be closed.

Ex. 1. Read and translate the text.

Ex. 2. Answer the questions.

1. How would you comment on all the rules formulated by J.G. Thurber?

2. What manner are these rules written in?

3. What rule would you certainly follow?

4. What rule is unacceptable to you at all?

5. What would you add to theses rules?

Ex. 3. Make up your own list of rules for a happy marriage.