I'm old enough

I got engaged a week and a half ago, and everyone has basically been asking me the same questions over and over again:

"Wait, aren't you 19 years old?"

To put the rumors to bed once and for all: Yes, I am 19 years old and engaged. What's even crazier: My fianc?(c)e is 18 years old.

"You're too young to get married, aren't you?"

I don't remember saying I was married. I don't even remember setting a date for the marriage. So that question doesn't exactly apply to me. Furthermore, who gets to decide who is too old, or too young to get married?

The only person who can decide those things is the individual going through it.

Nobody can tell me that because I was born in 1985, that I'm too young to get married, but someone who was born in 1982 is old enough. What if I was born earlier in 1985, and I was 20 already? Would that be old enough to get married? Can a few months really make that much of a difference?

There is also the argument that I shouldn't be getting married because I won't even be able to drink at my wedding.

Well, if I really needed a few stiff drinks after my wedding, I could make the 45-minute drive to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and drink as much as I wanted to.

Does a few miles really mean the difference between being too young and old enough? Are Canadians really that much more mature than Americans?

Well, they do have socialized health care. So I guess that's a yes.

The fact of the matter is there is no tangible evidence to support the argument that I'm too young to be engaged. It's not as if I decided to do this when I was out on a bender with a bunch of my friends, watching girls get naked and wrestle in the mud.

Although many important decisions in my life have been made in those moments, I decided this when my mind was clear, and when I thought long and hard about the future. When I did this, I saw that the only person I wanted for my future was E'rly.

Yes, I do realize that after the marriage her name will be E'rly Gvertz and that borders on abuse, but that's beside the point.

People who make a decision like this early in their lives will always be told that they are obviously too young, too na??ve, or too inexperienced. But none of those detractors could possibly have experienced life in the same way they have.

Those people know only what they are ready for, and not what anyone else is ready for. They can't know what anyone else can handle, because they have never lived anyone else's life.

There will always be the possibility that making such a life-altering decision at a young age is a mistake, but that possibility exists all the time. When you decided what college to attend, when you decided which high school to attend. When you decided in ninth grade that you had to leave your girlfriend or boyfriend because they were failing math.

The decision would not have been made, however, if the consequences were never considered, and anyone who can understand that is automatically old enough to make important decisions.

Designations like, "Too young," "Too na??ve," or "Not smart enough to pass sequential three mathematics," are subjective and unfair to use when telling someone that they can or cannot make specific decisions.

Especially because sequential three was really hard. Boy am I glad they got rid of that.

But there is no way that one person could ever be able to tell another that they are unable to decide on a certain issue based solely on the number of times the Earth has revolved around the sun since the year they were born.

That's an uncontrollable occurrence that has nothing to do with anyone's cognitive capacity. Any person who can appreciate and experience love is able to decide that they should be engaged and consequently get married.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to say that every couple who is currently in love should get engaged tomorrow. There are people out there who are currently not ready for such a commitment. That is a definite possibility.

However, the fact that these people may or may not be ready to get married has nothing to do with how old they are, or even how long they have been with their significant others. Time goes on regardless of people's feelings for one another.

So yes, I may be just 19 years old, but that does not mean that I am unable to make a decision that will affect me for the rest of my life. I've already made quite a few of those decisions.

And of all the hard decisions I've had to make, this one was the easiest.

e-mail: dsgvertz@buffalo.edu