Friday, January 12, 2007

The Kidnapped Bride




There's the case right now of the kidnapped bride from Utah. Full details can be found here, but the basic story is that Julianna Redd wanted to marry Perry Myers and her parents Julia and Lemuel Redd didn't want her to. The day of her wedding they got her in a car and drove to Colorado and told her not to get married. Eventually, after much argument and possibly hair pulling (honestly, though, what can you expect from a couple of angry chicks?), she went back and married good old Perry four days later.
Now, what makes this interesting is that first, Julia and Lemuel are from Monticello, which is where my Dad is from. Secondly, August 4 is my brother's birthday, which is the day she was supposedly "kidnapped", which makes him famous.
My take on this is that the major problem is that Julia and Lemuel named their daughter "Julianna". That in and of itself is worth a few hundred hours of community service. To make matters worse, Julianna was trying to marry a "Perry". His parents deserve at least double that Julia's parents in community service. Lemuel must have realized that he was dooming his grandkids to be the children of misfits, and he had to do everything to stop them.
Also, if mom and dad did so much to stop this holy matrimony from happening, maybe it shouldn't have happened at all. I'm putting the odds at 3:1 that this marriage doesn't make it past two kids and five years. So, if the parents are convicted of kidnapping, it should be under the stipulation that if they were right and the marriage ends, whatever happens to them happens to Perry and Julianna. And then, they can take their crying daughter in their arms and say, "We're sorry we named you Julianna". Perry (and his parents) should be kicked, just because of his name.