Every Saturday the paper runs an agate listing of all the marriage licenses obtained from the county that week. In today’s paper (on B2, specifically), you’ll be able to see that four 14-year-old girls are being married off to lads of ages varying from 19 to 25.
While I won’t begrudge anyone her right to young love, I will just offer this (extraneous and unnecessary) proof that 14-year-olds aren’t of sound mind to make such monumental life decisions:
When I was 14, I would sob and scream and throw an inconsolable fit when I had a bad hair day.
Let us not focus on the ability of these girls to make monumental life decisions, since they are children and mentally should be regarded as such, and turn our attention towards the pack of stellar 19-25 year old men who seem to be having the same monumental life decision issues, but with none of the youthful innocence that makes it sort of acceptable.
True. I didn’t mean for it to sound as if the decisions were all on the girls. I spent plenty of time spitting about the dudes in question before I actually wrote anything, and ended up not wasting any pixels on them.
Also, can we verbally lash the parents of these girls, too?
Wouldn’t the parents of the girls have to approve these marriages? Or are TN laws that bass-ackwards?
Beautiful Girl, spam my blog again and I’ll break yo beautiful face!
Nashgirl, indeed, these marriages were approved by the parents. Tennessee law says that’s a must for people under the age of 16.
Several of these people in these young marriages share the same last name. I suspect creepy cult activity.
I would say “what adult man would even want to marry/have sex with a fourteen year old?”, but I did spend a lot of time in Hardin County, so I know exactly what kind of twentysomething guys would be ok with marrying a girl who’s mistaking ejaculation with love.
/the rant that was just getting started
“I suspect creepy cult activity.”
Big Love“has gotten too big for its britches.
So big that it doesn’t give a damn about accidental quotation marks.
This is waay more interesting than creepy cult activity. The weddings were all irish travelers, like brad pitt in snatch. There’s a large group of them that live in a trailer park on Shelby Drive near the airport. You may have seen them at Pete and Sam’s on sunday nights or at Redbird’s games.
The same last name thing is because they are likely third, second, or even first cousins. There are only 5 or so surnames among the Memphis travelers: Costello, McNally, Toogood, Gorman, and one or two more that I can’t recall.
Start digging on this and it gets even more fascinating.
Several of these gypsies (all male) went to Oakhaven High School with me back in the 70s and 80s. All had the last name Costello. We would drive thru the trailer park (dubbed Gypsyville) and gaulk at how they would sit in separate vehicles (teenage boys in one car, girls in another, etc.) parked in front of their housetrailers for hours. The cars were all new cadillacs and lincolns. The boys would only be in school for part of the year and would spend most of the year out on the road painting and doing other odd jobs going from town to town. None of the girls attended school.