Road Test

If you and your significant other are even thinking about getting married, and you’re wondering if he or she is the right person for you, there is a way you can find out. It’s fairly simple, and requires only an automobile, at least one licensed driver, some gas, and an event to which you are both invited. If you can survive this test, then mazel tov, you have my blessing to be wed.

Here’s how it goes:

1. Your event. This works best if it’s an event with a firm starting time, for example, a wedding, a funeral, or a recital/concert/play in which one of your adorable nieces, nephews or young cousins has a starring role. The event should be located within a two hour radius of your home, preferably in an area neither of you have ever visited.

2. The directions. The directions to the event must be sufficiently vague in order to provide a challenge. I’d recommend getting them from MapQuest. No cell phones or GPS systems allowed.

3. The starting position. Select one participant to be driver and the other to be navigator. Navigator gets to hold the vague but challenging directions. Navigator also gets control over the radio, the interior climate, and any toll money that might be required. You will get extra points if the road conditions are less than ideal.

4. Start driving and begin to keep score:

-- If you make it to the destination early, with only minor disagreements about choice of radio station or CD, and take only one or two wrong turns without blaming one party or the other, then you are marriage material. Go straight to the town hall to apply for your license, unless you are both of the same sex and live in a state that does not cotton to such things, the backward-thinking prigs.

-- If you take several wrong turns, blame the lousy directions, complain to your traveling partner about his or her taste in music and penchant for raising the thermostat so high you’re sweating like Tiger Woods checking his BlackBerry, and still arrive within a 15 minute window, then you will probably be OK.

-- If you have to stop several times for directions, blame the idiot at the Getty Mart for sending you miles out of your way, blame your traveling partner for not seeing the proper exit sign fast enough or for getting chocolate or coffee on the upholstery, AGAIN, and arrive within a 20 minute window, you should probably seek couples counseling before deciding to spend your lives together.

-- If your navigator can’t figure out the directions, throws up his or her hands in defeat, complains about you for not getting better directions in a voice that rises so high that only dogs and lobbyists can hear it, while the driver circles around the same three-block area several times, in the rain, crying, and you decide to bag the whole thing and go home, if you can ever find your way there (refusing to speak to each other the entire trip), then I’d recommend that when you finally get home, that you both seek individual counseling, and start seeing other people. Especially if one or both of you has a bout of road rage while driving past that same Applebee’s for the fourth time.

(Note: I am not a professional marriage counselor. This post is for entertainment purposes only. No individuals were physically harmed or emotionally wounded in the making of this post.)