If You Name Your Kid Romeo, He's Going to Become A Moody Freak

Ah, can there be anything more precious than young love? Yes, there can--valuable minerals! Let me just point out to you that if your financial adviser tells you you should buy shares of young love, it's time to get a new financial adviser--and to stop answering ads in "Highlights for Children". Young love burns hot and fast, but it is aimless and destructive at the same time.

There is no better example than last night's film, "Romeo and Juliet" (the 1968 version, with no famous people unless you consider Michael York famous which I don't. Sorry, Logan's Run!). As it turns out, the film was actually based on an old play! (I guess everything's a remake these days!). You may know the story--two teenagers from warring families fall in love, their families try to tear them apart and they kill themselves at the end. (I should have said, "Spoiler Alert", whoops!) Rather than revel in the tragedy I'd like to point out that both Romeo and Juliet were morons and needed a good smack.

Let's start with the fact that they knew each other for a span of maybe a couple weeks (judging from the time frame of the film), and they were both barely out of puberty. Now think about whoever you "loved" or "had a crush on" or "was stalking in a creepy way" when you were 15. Do you think that that relationship should have worked out? Hell no! Frankly, the Capulets and Montagues (the families in the story) would have been better off telling their idiot kids to go ahead and shack up--once the initial crush phaze wore off, Romeo would be sitting on his couch in his underwear watching ladies' volleyball while Juliet (in curlers and eating iced cream from the box, of course) would have been nagging him about cleaning the gutters. Any romance at age 15 is practically guaranteed to fail! Let it run its course!

Instead, keeping in mind that these are Italians and that Italians are second only to the Irish when it comes to fighting over stupid crap for way too long, the families in the story did what they could to end the relationship and there were stabbings, forbiddings, and scoldings. And rather than Romeo saying "hey, too bad my folks aren't cool with Juliet, I guess I'll console myself with Verona's finest party girls" he gets all moody and emo, and Juliet of course goes all drama queen, and Romeo thinks she's dead for some reason and instead of checking her pulse he kills himself and then she finds out when she wakes up and she kills herself too.

When I have kids, it's going to be arranged marriages all the way.