In the Catholic Church we are required to go to pre-Cana – marriage preparation classes.   All those married a hundred and fifty years like Al and I raise your hand if it gave you ANY clue as to what married life would be like.  I thought so.  Here are my suggestions for pre-Cana exercises that might actually help the young couple know what they will be up against.

Exercise 1

A twenty four foot travel trailer attached to a Chevy Suburban will be provided for the starry eyed couple.  They will take it to a campground and will each take turns backing the trailer into the spot, with the other person giving directions.  I have researched this quite thoroughly with other folks who use a travel trailer and have been assured that this is an excellent way of determining if you can have patience with your partner under stressful circumstances and to find out if your partner is your intellectual equal.  If the actual parking of the trailer goes well on the first go round, you will be required to return the following weekend at dusk.  Before attempting the same exercise, you will be required to sit in one position for four hours, with only Fritos and water to snack on.  When it is time to park the trailer, the sun will have set.  You will have been listening to Raffi tapes for a total of six hours.  Three small children will be provided to sit inside the Chevy.  They will not have eaten for four hours either.  One will not have napped all afternoon, despite the Raffi tapes.  If, and only if, you are able to take turns parking the trailer without the assistance of a kindly old gent in the campsite next to you, and if you are speaking to each other when this exercise is over, you may pass to the next exercise.

Exercise 2

The woman will be required to take some sort of nauseating, fatigue inducing medication, simulating the first trimester of pregnancy.  The couple must pretend they are married and take off on a two week tent camping trip in a Subaru coupe to the Southwest, including Death Valley National Monument, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, Nevada.  They will pretend this is their last trip alone before their first bundle of joy arrives.  The exercise must not begin until the woman has actually come down with a terrible flu bug, so that they leave on their trip when she has a temperature and cannot breathe in addition to the pregnancy symptoms.  Let’s just say this is in late September. They will have not really researched the weather in the Southwest this time of the year and will only find out when they get there that the elevation of the great Plateau on which most of the southwest sits is at an elevation so far above sea level that the nights go down to about 30 degrees Fahrenheit and there is actually snow on the ground at the Grand Canyon.  The woman must sleep most of the trip, leaving her husband to hike and sightsee on his own while she sleeps in the car alot.  She must pretend it is funny when he takes a photo of someone sleeping on a picnic table at a rest stop thinking it was her,  and it turns out it was not her after all, she was still in the bathroom. 

They must take a 25 mile side trip – one way – on the way to Death Valley on a winding mountain road because they do not want to miss the ancient Bristlecone Pine forest.  They will pinkie swear that they will never tell another soul until the day they die what a total waste of time and gas it was, that the Bristlecone Pines look like what they are – the oldest trees on the planet.  Having wasted approximately 2 hours on this enriching experience, they must then decide whether to take the short cut to Death Valley that is shown on the map.  Being the adventurous types, and so very much in love, they decide to go ahead and try it, moving aside the wooden barrier that is partially blocking the road. 

They must prove their love and trust in each other by not turning around when the road very quickly turns to gravel and then sand.  They have their map.  They know where they are going.  They are in love.  They are still feeling adventurous.  When they come to a fork in the road, they will decide to take the one that does not lead to a small shack that they can see in the distance, as it probably houses an insane mass murderer who is lying in wait for young couples, one of whom is with child.

Further on they will come upon a pickup truck that is stuck by the side of the road, and people are waving at them.  The woman will protest that they must drive on past, that it surely is highway bandits.  They are literally in the middle of the desert, and the desert is in the middle of nowhere.  She begs him to continue on but he rolls his eyes at her and acts as if she is pond scum for even considering driving by people in need.  She must forgive him for this.  As they approach the truck it is clear that the figures are actually young women wearing only their bras and panties.  Not swimsuits.  Actual bras and panties.  The woman must try not to get hysterical as her knight in shining armor insists they have to stop, even though she is sure that a man with a semiautomatic rifle is waiting in the cab of the truck and that the hot young girls are just decoys.

The man will be pleased when his lovely wife turns into a compassionate woman when she realizes it is only college girls who had been on a road much like the one they are on.  They started out on a similar road and when it became impossible to traverse, they took off over open desert until they came across this road.  The young couple are the first people they’ve seen in 24 hours.  They are sunburned, the tires are completely blown on their truck and one is literally riding on rims.  They have been subsisting on camping food and, of course, beer that they brought for their camping trip.  The young couple must agree to travel with the girls, like one big happy caravan.  The man must try to act brave for the all the women he has in tow now, including one who is pregnant with his first child, even though he is getting rather nervous himself at this point.   The woman makes a mental note to find out what college these girls go to and she will not send her soon-t0-be-born child to that college, but will find a school with higher admission standards. 

They will eventually meet up with a truck coming the other way, with a friendly couple of locals who can help the girls change their worst tire.  The woman asks the locals if a)Death Valley is that way (yes) and b) is that a storm coming (yes).  As there is evidence of dry arroyos everywhere the young couple takes off to get to Death Valley before the storm washes out the road.  

Bonus Test:  When they get to the main road that will take them to the Death Valley park headquarters, they find another barrier all the way across the road.  When the woman pops out of the car to move it aside she sees what they must have missed on the partial barrier at the beginning of the road: a sign that said Road Closed.  They must arrive at their campsite as if nothing happened, still ready, willing and able to walk down the aisle, and neither one making a snide remark to the other, fall exhausted into bed with a great story to tell their grandchildren some day.