Sweet Sixteen

How do you prepare three lessons on marriage for a P3 class (7-year olds)?  This was my task over the last month as I made my weekly visit to the primary school.  Marriage is apparently one of their RE topics and the teacher was all too happy to pass on the chore to me.

“Right, how many of you are thinking of getting married this year?” I asked.  The “euwww!” factor rates large when it comes to relations of a sexual nature at this age group and so naturally, when I asked if anyone would be willing to commit themselves to a lifetime of kissing only one girl/boy there were few willing to take the charge.  They all looked around and giggled nervously, wondering who would be the first to step to the line.

“Have you been looking at anyone in the class and thinking, ‘Hmm, they might just make a good husband/wife?’”

It is the outrage, the bombast of these questions that invariably captures and holds their attention.  I explained that marriage was a decision two people made that was bound together in public commitment with the addition of God’s blessing upon them.  I explained that a marriage required a legal contract and that it generally took place in a church, but sometimes at hotels or other places, and that, when asked, I served as the officiant.

“Ok, who wants to get married?”  Two volunteers nervously raised their hand, not really sure what they were committing themselves to.

“Of course, we’re just pretending here, aren’t we?  I’ll give you a fake name because you’re just actors, right?  You can be Steve and you can be Sheila.”

“Do you Steve, take Sheila…”

Both refused to take the other’s hand, “euwwing” and “grossing” volubly, the class in hysterics.  The little girl was particularly horrified and looked at the little creep in front of her and cringed at the prospect of even touching him, much less giving herself in fidelity to kissing him and him alone for the rest of her life.

I was beginning to think twice about the wisdom of performing this ceremony and was concerned I might put them both off marriage forever.  But we got through it, and when it came to “I do,” I offered them the chance of saying “No way!”  Both opted for the latter.

“Ok, give them a round of applause.  Their acting was superlative!”

Minangkabau wedding

Week two I was back, and this time had prepared a lesson on marriage in the Islamic tradition, for which I had a number of pictures of brides and grooms in traditional Eastern wedding garb.  I explained that a wedding was a legal contract agreed by the bride and groom and that a wedding was called a “nikah.”  Interesting enough, but what really surprised me was that as soon as I entered the room I had a bunch of them climbing my leg begging “Can we get married today?”

“No, no, get off me!  We’re not getting married today, forget it!”

“Aww, we wanted to get married today,” they cried in agony, as if I’d denied them the chance to enter the “highest halls of human happiness.”

So, week three I gave them what they wanted.  This time I would go through the whole service, not just the vows.  A mass wedding at the Primary school.

“Ok, who wants to get married today?”  They all raised their hands.  “I need a queue of girls here and a queue of boys here.”  Almost all the girls lined up, about 12 of them.  Four boys summoned the courage and stood up visualising a life of hedonistic polygamy as they were forced to take three wives each.

I looked around at the sullen observers and said, “Good, I need some best men and some maids of honour, too.  Remember we need witnesses to this carnage.”  Several more jumped up to join in the festivities, happy to play a part that precluded the awful prospect of touching a classmate of the opposite sex.

I used the text of an actual liturgy I’d used two years earlier to marry a couple with children at the same school.  “I won’t use actual names here, I’ll just say, ‘Do you, boy, take girl as your wife and do you promise to be faithful to her for the rest of your life?’”

They thought that was hilarious!

As expected, the whole charade quickly devolved into a riot with children leaping and jumping and shouting like pups in a cage.  The grooms were growing increasingly nervous and starting to squirm under the pressure, just like real men!

I was shouting, too, right up until the fateful moment, “What God has joined together, let no one separate, you may kiss the bride.”

A veritable explosion of laughter and hilarity.  Had they been drinking I would not have been able to stop them breaking into a fist fight, a riot of marital bliss run amok.

Watching closely, I discovered to my horror that not all of them were making sport of the occasion.  Two in particular looked as though they were ready to consummate their dormant passions for one another.  The groom was the same kid who I “married” two weeks earlier, the one who’d been the first to beg me on week two for a second chance at love.

Thankfully there was no kissing, no pulling of garters, no crude wedding songs or bawdy speeches from drunken best men, no lingerie gifted to the blushing bride, no weeping mothers of the bride, nothing truly untoward.  It was all just good fun, save for that one couple.  “Boy” had place arm around “girl” looking keen to press his advantage, while “girl” looked around shy and demure, but not fighting the physical contact of her paramour.

Granted “girl” was cute as a button and “boy” had perhaps seen in her tiny breast the promising virtues of latter-day womanhood.  Perhaps, too, she’d seen in him something more than a stupid and gross boy in her class, but the future handsome man of her dreams.

Dear God, where is the garden hose when you need one!

The best thing about being the school chaplain is that I don’t have to clean up the mess I make by winding these kids up like little springs.  “Well, I guess that’s my time up, I’ll see you next week,” as I beat a hasty retreat to the door.

I was twenty steps down the hall when I heard “boy” shouting at me and running down the hall.  “Mr. Carswell, Mr. Carswell.”

“Yes, what is it,” I asked, fighting the urge to run down the stairs.

Gretna Anvil

Scotland is unique in its marriage laws allowing couples to tie the knot at 16 rather than making them wait to 18 as they do in England.  Getting married “over the anvil” just across the border at Gretna Green was common for youngsters on the run from angry parents, eloping to the blacksmith who muttered a hasty and abbreviated liturgy and provided the marriage bed in which the new husband could consummate his urge with a quickie before the girl’s relatives skewered him with a hay fork.  Once the deed was done (the vows and the sex), that was it, they had a new son-in-law and a sexual scandal to lace with the family lore.

“Mr. Carswell, Mr. Carswell, when we turn 16, we can get married, can’t we?”

Oh, Jesus, what have I done!