True, but weren’t you wondering if she’d killed any of her previous husbands? If she has, you may not like the form of her answer!
Quoth Omega Glory:
I’m sure she’s had plenty of practice in that sort of thing. I’d be happy to leave the details of that to her.
Myself, I’d be more than happy to stay with and marry her, provided she’s willing to marry me and to have at least two or three kids (about how many I would want from a marriage with a normal woman). Far from being a liability, I see her slow-aging as a significant positive. Ultimately, the whole purpose of all our complicated courtship rituals is to try to find the best potential other parent for our children. Even aside from any other positive traits she has (she surely has several, or the relationship wouldn’t have started in the first place), any children I have from her will have, on average, about five additional years of healthy adult life. That’s a good thing.
Plus, on an intellectual level, in those two millennia she has to have learned a lot. And I really enjoy hanging out with people who know more than me.
Hypothetically, yeah, sounds like a pretty cool gig, I’d love to have conversations with that person until I grow old and die, she’d be a good conversationalist I think.
Keep in mind, though, that, in the real world, immortality (or even super-long life like what is postulated in the OP) is not something you’d want.
I think this was because of the flood - run the numbers through as to who died when, who was born when, and when the flood was, from the account in Genesis (yeah, yeah, I know, but this is only where Methuselah is mentioned) and it turns out that the flood was what killed Methuselah (would he have still been living today were there no flood), plus the rest of the lives recorded seem to end conveniently then.
I guess I’m more vain and/or insecure than I realized.
My first thought was that I’d be 80 years old and my husband would look and feel half my age. Could he possibly be attracted to me then? Why would he want to hang around playing cards and shuffleboard with me when he could be out scuba diving, ski diving, and whatever? So, I’d have to say no to marriage.
But I’d have a hot and heavy fling with him! I’ll bet he’s a lot of fun!
This is exactly the question I was thinking. Does she stick with you until the end, or does she dump you at some point of inconvenience? Like the first time you need adult diapers, or your start to forget things, or your bulging stomach makes your penis disappear.
The reason I hesitate in this scenario is that this part of a relationship will be the single most different part from any others. If you grow old together you can can support each other, but with this…?
I’d try to have her DNA analyzed by the government.
I ignored the option, “My answer depends on whether the lover’s a vampire,” because that’s a given. Stakity stakey stake!
You realize that you just described a Beren/Luthien or Aragorn/Arwen relationship, right? Well, OK, Brenda/Connor.
Protocol requires me to threaten you hordes of gamma-ray-emitting dragonflies.
(They’ve been nesting among marigolds.)
Why is her DNA any of the government’s business?
I don’t think Luthien was anywhere near 2000. Wasn’t her birth roughly contemporaneous to the founding of Gondolin?
Who are Brenda and Connor?
Both Luthien and Arwen renounced their immortality when they joined with their mortal lovers - I don’t think Beren and Luthien actually married as he was dead by that point (he got better). Also, there’s no record of any previous relationships in either case, so it’s not that close to this hypothetical - in those cases it’s the immortal that makes the sacrifices.
Yeah, I know the Silmarillion stuff. The important question is Who are Brenda & Connor? I would look it up but I don’t know the URL to google.com or en.wikipedia.org.
Try Yahoo Answers, that’ll help. Or start a poll here.
I just assumed it was a modern popular culture reference, and therefore ignored it.
I’m guessing that that’s Connor Macleod, of the Highlander series.
Indeed. And Brenda Wyatt, the Roxanne Hart character.
I left off Rachel/Connor & Heather/Connor, because those are a little different & it didn’t seem necessary. Would Tessa/Duncan (from the tv version) have been more recognizable? Whatever, it’s an old idea.
I’ll tell you a little secret. I’ve never watched any of the Highlander movies and seen only a fraction of a couple of episodes. One looked interesting–it was when the hero, in a fit of madness, killed his sidekick; the other was disturbing, as it seemed to be on the verge of showing Tracy Scoggins about to be raped. I just couldn’t get into it.
Same reason why say the AIDS virus is.
HIV is a threat to public health; people who get it grow ill and die without treatment, and that treatment is expensive to society. None of that is true of the Methuselah’s slow aging.
How, again, is her DNA the government’s business? Is she government property for some reason?
Similarly Methuselah’s DNA would be incredibly unique among human beings and should be studied for the greater good. (yeah I’m a bit of a civic good person).
But what if she protests? Has she not the right to control over her own body?
And frankly I think the idea of her longevity spreading through the population – even the lesser version of her longest-lived child, who died at 400 --is probably a bad idea. Though I would probably be all cowardly and stuff when my turn with the Reaper came.