7 year itch

On April 1 of this year (that's tomorrow for me...likely today or perhaps yesterday for you) I will celebrate my seventh wedding anniversary. Seven years seems like a long time. There are very few things I've done for seven years in a row. I went to college for 8 years. (Actually, I went to college for 8 years, then took a two year break and worked in the "real" world, and then REALLY went to college for 2 more years to finish my degree. And I want to figure out how to do 2 more years of college before I'm too rediculously old.) I did hold the same job for seven years...but that was during my 8 year stint in college, so I don't know that it counts. And I worked for a comic book store, so it really doesn't count.

But none of that really has to do with seven years of marriage. Much of the seven years of our marriage seems to have just slipped by without me noticing. I think the whole 9-5 thing really makes one's life a blur. That's why I'm opposed to it. It isn't rare to be opposed to something that's a life sentence.

Actually, a lot has happened in the last seven years. I got married. I finally earned my BFA. We had a son. My mother died. We had to give up a dog. We got another dog and immediately broke its foot. Terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Our country went to war over this. I got a full-time job. Polly gave up teaching to stay home with Ross. My Grandmother died. We did a major home addition. We gave up our cat to the family who had kept her during our construction (the girls had become too attached). I tested to become a firefighter. I took a polygraph exam as part of the process. I was told that I lied (I didn't). We had another son. Our country started another war (I'm not sure why). We needed a new house. I got a new job. We moved. We had a daughter (a surprise, courtesy of the Durex® Corporation). I had a vasectomy (no more surprises!). I directed a play.

I'm sure there's more that happened, but at this particular moment, my boys have walked into the room and are doing their best to distract me. You see why I normally blog at work. Somehow it's less distracting.

Anyhow, there's a play called "The Seven Year Itch." The plot is about Richard Sherman, a guy whose company is about to publish a book of the same title, which claims that a significant number of men have extramarital affairs after seven years of marriage. He's paranoid about falling into this trap but for some reason, he sends his wife and son off to Maine for the summer. He meets a young TV model and invites her down for a drink. As he begins to entertain notions of seducing her, he also becomes paranoid that his wife is carrying on with their neighbor in Maine. The play was turned into a movie featuring Marilyn Monroe. The iconic image of Marilyn standing above a subway grate as wind from a train passing underneath causes her dress to blow up around her is from this film. It the play, Sherman and the Girl become intimate. In the movie, it's all in his imagination.

I don't know if such a thing as a "Seven Year Itch" actually exists--if there's ever been any academic study to prove that there's any magic about that number. In my quick search on the internet (where I find all my marital aids) I could find nothing that didn't specifically reference the play and movie. It appears that all the "research" which points to there being such a thing is done to prove whether or not the premise upon which the fictional script stands is accurate. Apparently, the image Marilyn's skirt blowing up over her head become so ingrained in our collective unconcience that this hypothetical has become fact.

That's a pretty interesting comment on the power of imagery.