Nobody’s perfect as a mate, but Mary Poppins was pretty close

By David McElroy · April 14, 2019

About 10 years ago, I almost married Mary Poppins.

She wasn’t an English nanny, but if Mary Poppins had a 21st century American counterpart, this would have been her.

She was brilliant and beautiful. She was full of confidence, but she was charming and diplomatic when she needed to be. She was funny, creative and intellectually curious. And maybe more than anything, she was remarkably competent.

She was the sort of person who you could send to fix any disastrous scene of chaos and failure, because she would organize everything, give orders to those who would take them, charm those who wouldn’t take orders — and bring success where disaster had loomed.

She didn’t care what anybody else thought. She was determined to do only what her conscience told her was right. And she fiercely and protectively loved children.

In almost every respect, she was my ideal woman. And she was crazy about me, too.

She loved the Mary Poppins story and she enjoyed being compared to this magical nanny. At one point, I even gave her a replica of Mary’s parrot-head umbrella.

I’m thinking about Mary Poppins — well, my Mary Poppins — because I’ve been watching “Mary Poppins Returns,” the recent sequel starring Emily Blunt in the role made famous by Julie Andrews. (I liked some things about the movie and didn’t care for others, but I don’t want to get into that.) Watching the movie put me in the mindset of enjoying this character again, so my thoughts inevitably returned to the American Mary Poppins from my past.

Why didn’t I marry someone who was “practically perfect in every way”?

I’ve talked about this before, sometimes pretty directly and sometimes in roundabout ways. But what I’m thinking about tonight isn’t really about the woman I almost married. I’m not kicking myself for not marrying her. I’m not reliving the past and wondering what might have been different. She’s married to someone else and we have gone in entirely different directions. I don’t even know her anymore.

So when I say this isn’t about her, I mean it. This is about what we expect from those people who we choose to be our partners. If this woman met so many of my preferences, why did I back out of marrying her?

We make two seemingly opposite mistakes in relationships, but I don’t really think they’re opposites. I think they’re just flip sides of the same thing. Fear.

One of the mistakes we make is accepting faults that we have no business accepting in a partner. I see this one all the time. People remain with partners who are completely wrong for them — people who have serious flaws that make it impossible for them to be happy together — all because they’re afraid this is the best they’re going to find.

The other mistake we make is asking for perfection. We can become smitten with someone and think this is a perfect match, only to give up or run away when we discover something in the other person which isn’t perfect. We do this because we’re scared that this flaw might be more serious than we fear — and we’re afraid of committing to this “almost perfect” person, because we think someone actually perfect might come along.

I think most people make the the first of these mistakes in their choices of partners, so they end up with partners who are completely wrong for them. They expect too little and they accept partnerships that are serious mismatches.

This leaves them unhappy and lonely.

I have been guilty of the second mistake — and I was guilty of it with my Mary Poppins. The specifics don’t matter now. I had some legitimate concerns, but instead of making sure the concerns were addressed, I gave up out of fear. On a conscious level, I know that nobody’s perfect. Unconsciously, I was probably looking for perfection.

This left me unhappy and alone.

When you make a serious mistake, it’s easy to swing back in the other direction, but I don’t think I’m going to do that. (The one time I came close to doing that, I dated a woman — about three years ago — for a few months simply because she wanted me, but I quickly realized how miserable it made me to date someone who was a horrible mismatch.)

I still fear I might make my old mistake again. I know what I want and need. I’m very specific about it. So what if I meet someone who meets 95 percent of those things? Is that close enough?

I’ve recently come to the end of one long road of waiting and hoping for someone who isn’t going to work out. I’ve given up on her, so I think I’m finally ready to get serious about giving someone else a chance again. I think I’m finally ready to look again without constantly comparing somebody new to the visions of perfection which I’ve carried in my heart.

If I find a Mary Poppins again — and if she loves me — I’m going to marry her, even though she will be flawed. Or she might not be like Mary. She might be more like someone else entirely. But I like to think that I’ve gotten smart enough to know which things are essential and which things I’m willing to work with (or even overlook entirely).

Mary Poppins never claimed to be perfect. The Mary Poppins who I almost married never claimed to be perfect, either. I don’t need to look for someone perfect in the future, because I’m nowhere close to perfect myself.

No matter who she is, the partner I find next will not be perfect, but if I’m lucky, she will be “practically perfect in every way” — at least when it comes to matching me. And that’s more than good enough.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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