First comes love...

Or, according to my 5-year-old daughter, you "hang out for awhile and run around." Then you decide if you really want to get married.

"If you don't want to marry him, you leave him at the merry-go-round and go find someone else," she told me during a conversation after school today.

She apparently had been proposed to on the school bus.

So-and-so "whispered 'Will you marry me?' in my ear,'" she told me after she had bounced down the steps.

"Oh, what'd you say?" I asked.

"No," she said, rolling her eyes at me as if I should have already known the answer. "He's too old for me. He's one of the grade boys."

"The grade boys?" 

"You know, first, second, third, the boys in grades," she said.

"Oh. What grade is he?" 

"First," she said.

"Yeah, you're right, much too old for you," I said. "Besides, people don't get married until they're a lot older."

"Not that old," she said. "Not as old as you."

"Right. Thanks."

I'm not sure what stung more, that last remark or the fact that she was talking about some boy proposing to her at the age of five. I've got four more girls following in her footsteps.

Just what exactly am I in for and how do I cope? Please tell me now while I still have the wherewithal to comprehend it. Because, as my daughter says, I'm aging quickly.