Issue one... pre-marital counseling...

If you go into the store and pick up a bottle of vodka, whiskey, rum, or even that beloved nectar of the gods that we call Irish Cream, you will find the acquisition process surprisingly simple. One merely walks to the counter, hands a meager amount of the quickly failing dollar across, and is rewarded with a telltale brown paper sack that is meant to disguise your purchase from prying eyes. If one is exceptionally lucky and blessed with a continually youthful face, you might be forced to present a form of ID, justifying your presence in the store with a government regulated proof of maturity. Baring this one minor inconvenience, the exchange is flawless in its simplicity. If you are competent enough to get here and pick something out, you are probably competent enough to drink it…

Contrast this with proving your maturity in the process of marriage. After an eternity of proving yourself to various familial relations, the actual joy of pre-marital council begins. Far from the waving of an ID card, CHBC dumped two massive three-ring-binders into my lap, each containing nearly a thousand pages of microprint and now expects me to read them. Perhaps worse, they also expect Sarah to read them. This leads to a disastrous consequence. Sarah now has, what I like to scornfully call, “ideas.” Never in all my experience has it been a good thing for a woman to get “ideas.” The first woman to get an idea thought war, suffering, thorns, disease, and mortality would be a good trade for the Knowledge of Good and Evil (incidentally, we now have to wear clothes… way to go ladies, that was a great idea). Sarah’s new idea involve things like budgets, men leading the home, and her getting something call “love.” All that I can say is I have never had a bottle of Baileys’ get an “idea,” or if it did, it never said it out loud. At least, not until you get to about glass thirty-seven, then it might start talking, but it never cares if you don’t listen…

In conclusion, marriage=counseling, Irish Cream=ID at Counter.
Easy first win for Irish Cream