It's Going to Be Lengen, Wait For It... Dary! - Short Story Blog 3 (How I Met My Husband)

"So I said yes, and I went out with him for two years and he asked me to marry him, and we were engaged a year more while I got my things together, and then we did marry."

~ Alice Munro, How I Met My Husband


The title is not the only ridiculously similar characteristic shared by How I Met My Husband and the popular television comedy How I Met Your Mother. The two are very structurally similar. How I Met Your Mother is a show about Ted, who is telling his children the story of how he met their mother. He takes many seasons to get there (and it still isn't over yet), and tells them about many, many, many, many women that he meets along the way. How I Met My Husband is very much the same. Edie tells the story of how she met her husband, although most of the story is comprised of her experiences with another man. She only gets to her husband in the last two paragraphs; in Mother, the series will end with Ted meeting his wife. The two also have pretty much the exact same idea of telling the story of how the main characters met their spouses.

That's Awkward (Dramatic Irony) - Short Story Blog 2 (How I Met My Husband)

"He always tells the children the story of how I went after him by sitting by the mailbox every day, and naturally I laugh and let him, because I like for people to think what pleases them and makes them happy."

~ Alice Munro, How I Met My Husband


This last part of the story made me really uncomfortable - the dramatic irony was just too much! First of all, she writes this whole long story about how she obviously loves the pilot (and probably is still in love with him), even though they only had a brief fling. She talks about how she admired him and bonded with him, and then he just leaves her and never responds, so she settles for the mailman. Who, by the way, only has two paragraphs. Her husband only has two paragraphs, but her four-minute infatuation gets a freakin' novel. While we as readers know all of this, the mailman doesn't. When he thinks she is interested in him, we all know she's just waiting to be swooped up by a different man; this makes it SUPER awkward when he tells his children she couldn't stay away from him. Can you imagine her telling him the truth? "Umm, no honey, I was actually desperately in love with another man and still am..."

This kind of makes me think of women today. Women say they want a nice guy, but they always go for the bad boy when given the chance. The respectful guy just isn't that exciting, and especially for naive, sheltered girls (think about Roncalli girls. I fear for the female portion of our grade next year), someone who is a little more aggressive is a very intriguing and enticing idea. But, fear not, good guys, you all prevail in the end. A woman will always settle down with the nice man when she is ready to grow up and face reality. And that is exactly what Edie did.