Gestalt is a learning theory. It says that we learn things in wholes, not parts and pieces. That we experience the “aha” moment when the entirety of a concept is absorbed and understood by the brain all at once. I had one of those Gestalt “aha” moments very recently and it erupted into another and another, like pop rocks in my head, leaving me in the end with the certainty that my future son-in-law will be a bald man with a bright blue arrow tattooed on his head and a pet bison.

There are things about our present selves that we can trace back to our childhoods. I’m not fond of spiders because of a traumatic encounter with one when I was little. The smell of root beer makes me gag ever since my older sister smashed a tube of Bonnie Bell root beer scented lip gloss into my mouth and I swallowed and was sick for three days. Obvious situations where cause and effect are easy to see. But, there are other things that we believe are just pieces of ourselves that we were either born with or that we formed consciously through our lives out of intelligent choices we’ve made along the way. The mate we selected to spend our lives with might be an example of that second option. Or our career path might be another.

I’ve been married for 16 years to a man who looks a lot like every man I’ve ever had a crush on. I am a woman with a particular type. Examples of that type would be: Matt Dillon, Robert Downey Jr., Ben Affleck, Tom Cruise, Matthew Broderick, John Cusack and the list goes on and on—basically baby-faced, dark haired, dark eyed guys with crooked smiles. The one man I’ve had a crush on who didn’t fit that mold is blond, Scottish Ewan McGregor. I’ve always been rather proud of that because it shows I’m not completely predictable. Then I started watching interviews with Ewan McGregor and realized that while he looks nothing like my husband, they share the same soul. Particularly along the lines of the motorcycle racing, car enthusiast, and of course Star Wars stuff. When I heard Mr. McGregor state that his favorite sports movie was that horrible Le Mans monstrosity with Steve bore-me-to-death McQueen, I knew that I was truly hopeless. If the man doesn’t LOOK like my husband, then he just is my husband on the inside. My crushes all lead back to the man I spend my life with, day in, day out. I guess it’s kind of comforting, it means I really did marry the right person.

But, then we saw the trailer for the new Speed Racer Movie, and my husband brought home a DVD of the old cartoon that he and I used to watch as kids, in our separate houses, cities … states apart from each other. Never knowing of the other’s existence while we sat on our own seventies-décor couches, warbling along with the jaunty theme song, separated from each other by space and time. I was excited for the opportunity to share this cult gem with our own kids, but as I watched that first episode unfold, my body tremored with the shock of the gestalt moment hitting it full force. I married Speed Racer. I wed this man at the ripe age of twenty-two not because of any divine intervention causing our paths to cross at that particular time in our lives. Not because we were meant for each other in some deep bio-metaphysical way. But, because that’s just how long it took me to sort through all the other men in my path and come across a real life Speed to take home and call my own. The similar physical features, the exaggerated expressions of surprise, the penchant for hurried over-explanation, and the way he seems to stand perfectly still for just a little too long. Finally, there’s that common passion for racing, but for my husband, it’s on the Xbox in our livingroom with that Forza game, not for real. I’m not Trixie, I don’t have my own helicopter to fly around and save his ass if he crashes. It was all too eerie. This also explains my chimp aversion, but that’s a whole other issue. Speed was my first crush and apparently my last as well. My destiny was set, in my own house around 3:30 some random weekday afternoon, likely with a glass of milk in my hand, when everything in my body decided that I would settle for nothing less than the cartoon man I saw on the screen. Isn’t that romantic?

Well, it could be but, does this happen to everyone? What about my kids? I let my mind wander briefly, wondering how their television viewing patters might influence their future preferences in a mate, since as far as I know, this has never been studied. BAM That damn gestalt again. My 9 year-old has a crush on the kid from Avatar for as long as I can remember. My 13 year-old’s first love was Velma from Scooby Doo. My toddler’s current love IS Scooby Doo, but, if that’s too disturbing then we can go back a year to when she was all about the Teletubbies. Oh, my God! The airbender, I suppose I could tolerate. The Avatar guy is kind of cute with that new-age Asian thing going. He’d be fine to have around. The prissy know-it-all redhead would be a pain in the ass for a daughter-in law, but I guess if she gets too uppity I can always hide her glasses and laugh while she crawls around on the floor looking for them. Truth be told, a boy could do worse for himself. But, I absolutely need to start choosing cartoons for the little one more carefully or we could have a Thanksgiving dinner twenty years down the road with an obese gay blue man wearing a tutu carving our turkey for us. That would on the whole, most gestalty suck.

Bookmark to: