In the past few weeks I've read of several high-profile divorces. Early in May Drew Barrymore, 19, who starred in the movie Irreconcilable Differences, filed for divorce from her husband Jeremy Thomas, citing 'irreconcilable differences' as the reason. They had been married less than two months.
I'm surprised they could judge the marriage a failure after two months. It takes me longer than that to get used to a new mattress.
Paula Abdul has filed for divorce from Emilio Estevez, citing 'irreconcilable differences' as the cause. They had bravely borne their burden for two years before throwing in the towel.
America's ideal couple, Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold, are splitting up, over what they have called - you guessed it - 'irreconcilable differences'.
If these people are so deluded that they think 'irreconcilable differences' are grounds for divorce, they should never have been married in the first place.
I have never seen a marriage that was not rife with irreconcilable differences. In my household, irreconcilable differences spill out of closets, block doorways, and grow in the bathroom like mould. Fully 94.3 per cent of my wife's and my differences are clinically irreconcilable. So should we get divorced? Not if you believe, as I do, that these differences are inevitable, like calories in food, or the law of gravity. No one ever cited gravity as grounds for divorce.
Probably the most common source of irreconcilable differences is the telephone: husbands tend to view the device as a tool of communication. They engage in short and pithy conversations, sometimes to the point of rudeness. Women regard the telephone as a kidney patient regards a dialysis machine, as a cleansing instrument to be used until the need subsides.
