A 5-year old declared to me that she intended to marry me,lol.
Of my generation to both branches of the family from my mother and father, I’m the oldest at 30 as far as my 1′st cousins and my sibling go. The youngest, to my knowledge, is 2. I say “to my knowledge” because I’m usually the last person to know things and I might already have a newer/younger one. Currently, the number of first-cousins I have is....9, I think. 3 of whom I’ve not seen or spoken to in years. I hope they’re doing well.
Then I’ve got an assortment of 2n’d and 3′rd cousins, some of whom I’ve met, and most I know just exist. Of my second cousins, about half of them are my age or a little older. The rest range from 6 years younger than me down to age 5. The 5-year kid is the one in question that declared that she’d marry me one day.
Her father I don’t think she’s ever met (ran out when he found out her mom was pregnant, prick), and her mother......has a set of issues that I won’t go into because it would take longer to type it all out than I feel like taking and it would devolve into an angry rant. Suffice to say, other than her grandmother whom is currently taking care of her and occasionally my own folks or some friends of the family, she hasn’t had any particularly good adult role models to look up to, and of those she has had, few of them have the energy to keep up with her or else have kids of their own to also divide their attention between.
Well at least once every two weeks for the last several months I’ve been dropping by her grandma’s (Grand Aunt to me) place to help out around the yard or house (most recently I cleaned out her gutters. Best time to do that in the summer is when it’s lightly drizzling because then bugs don’t bother you) ranging from cleaning up broken branches from storms and torching them and other assorted yard work or looking after the young miss for a few hours while my GA either does some stuff in the house or runs errands outside of the house in town or even simply gets a few hours of peace, quiet, and/or sleep.
On one such day I’d just finished doing about a lap of the yard (it’s a bit over an acre in total area) at a jog with her riding on my shoulders. She’s not heavy, but I’m also not in as good a shape as I’d like to be. So I pause to rest and sit on the ground. She gets off my shoulders and sat on my lap to keep grass off her shorts while I rested. About three minutes into that she out-of-the-blue looks up into my eyes and declares she’s going to marry me one day. I blink twice in surprise, then object:
“Um, Young Miss, you’re just five and won’t be able to get legally married in this country until you’re 18.” To this, she replied:
“Yeah, but I’m young. I can wait.” She’s not incorrect, and since she’s a 2n’d cousin it wouldn't be illegal in this state, but still:
“True, but when you’ve aged to 18, I’ll be 43. Wouldn’t you prefer to be married to someone closer to you in age?” She shook her head.
“Nope. Not if they aren’t you.” I thought for a few seconds.
“I appreciate that you like me, Young Miss, but I’m pretty sure that by the time you’ve old enough to actually get married, you’ll have found somebody better.” I HOPE she does. I really do. If I’m still The Best in her eyes that the world has to offer in 13 years, then society has gone BEYOND F’d up. I’m no monster, but I’ve still done (or fapped to) a few things I don’t want my mother discovering. If I die, someone needs to go to my house and wipe every hard drive not in a console that I own.
“Nope!” Then she wrapped her arms around my neck and snuggled a side of her face into my chest and made a sound of contentment.
Adorable, but sometimes I wonder if I secretly live in an anime world and I’m one of the characters the show focuses on. Women 10 years and MUCH OLDER think I’m hot, and teens and children think I’m husband materiel (the Young Miss is only one example of minors Looking at me. I’ve probably made a post about that here at some point in the past). Meanwhile, women my own age are either already married, or aren’t interested at all. WTF. It’s like the script writer can’t decide to make my persona a Cougar Hunter or a Pedophile and is puzzled as to why I keep saying no to both so keeps throwing more and more at me. I keep waiting for an alien cat-girl to show up at some point!