Heifers in tulle

WHEN WOMEN HIT THEIR 30S, DO THEY REALLY STORM THE ALTAR LIKE COWS TO SLAUGHTER?

I'm told that when one gets to a certain age -- say, early 30s -- they all start dropping like flies. One moment you're slinging back Cosmos, yammering on about a date here, a one-night stand there, and the next moment you're wedged between two women with frilly hats on a church pew, listening to your best friend exchange Kahlil Gibran platitudes and rose-gold bands with his or her significant other.

I have yet to witness this milestone of the 30s, this inevitable shuffle toward the altar. My friends are a rather profane collective who have a hard time shuffling to Safeway, much less an altar. The men and women have, up until now, seemed commitaphobic in equal degrees: careers, apartments, shopping, movies -- all of it needed much more attention than forging bonds and planting roots. Oh, I know it's happening out there -- I need only read my alumni magazine to see that my little group is hardly representative -- but I thought we'd be immune, at least for a little while longer.

By the time I was 30, two years ago, only two of my friends had succumbed. One was a childhood friend who'd grown up in Piedmont -- a lily-white, upper-middle-class suburb across the San Francisco Bay where, typically, a teen would receive a foreign-make car on his or her 16th birthday. No surprise there. The other was my oddball best friend from high school who was famous for his inability to conduct any relationship that didn't last at least two years.

I'd been lulled into a false sense of security. I thought I was safe. My mistake was thinking I would have some hint of what was to come. Instead of the 30-something stampede to the altar, I envisioned a collective creep, then maybe a toddle, progressing into a saunter before exploding, God forbid, into a downright sprint. I assumed the movement would probably begin with my women friends, for all the obvious reasons. But I hardly expected it to come from the women athletes I know -- normally such a serious, unfrivolous gaggle of gals.