Men, Women, and Other People’s Weddings
My college buddy’s wedding was on a Saturday afternoon and, like any true American male, I would have rather been at home taking a nap.
Sure, I was happy for my friend. Sure, I wanted to show my support for his march into wedded bliss-again. And, sure, I was looking forward to all the booze, but statistics show that if given the choice between witnessing a wedding ceremony and throwing yourself down a flight of steps, most guys will take the steps.
Considering this, he’d asked me to stand up with him. Save for being on the other side of a natural disaster that destroyed entire regions of a continent, being part of the wedding ceremony for your best friend is hard to get out of.
“How’d they meet?” my wife asked as we drove to Wisconsin. I didn’t have my tuxedo, I didn’t know how to get to the church, and we were going to be late for the rehearsal dinner. Eh, he was probably expecting it.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“How can you not know?” she asked.
“It just never came up.”
Why is how people met important? Unless some guy rushes into a burning building and saves a woman from certain death, then flies her to safety in the Batcopter, how they met is just as important as what she flossed with after dinner.
For example:
Me (feigning interest): How’d you two meet?
My buddy: She was sitting next to me at lunch and I ate all her fries when she went to the bathroom.
See? That’s nothing compared to the Batcopter story.
“He’s your best friend,” she said. “How can you not know?”
Ladies, guys don’t ask a lot of questions. We might ask a buddy how he thinks the Packers are going to do this year. We might ask how much mileage their car gets. And we’ll definitely ask if they’ve got more beer. But how he met some girl? Unless he brings it up, we’ll just assume he picked her up in a strip club.
“He lives three states away,” I said, completely negating the fact that with today’s advances in telecommunications, I could find out this information if my buddy lived on a mountaintop in Tibet. “Besides, if they’re getting married, there are more things to worry about-like the reception buffet.”
“Well,” she said. “I would have asked.”
Silence crept into the car just long enough for me to get comfortable.
“How many people are standing up with him?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“He asked you to be a groomsman and you don’t know how many people you’re standing up with?”
I guess I never really thought about it. It’s kind of like Pluto finally being asked to join the solar system. It didn’t care how many planets it was orbiting the sun with, it was just happy to be there. Of course, now that Pluto’s no longer considered a planet, I bet it invites all the other planets to its wedding just to get back at them.
“No,” I said, avoiding the Pluto analogy and opting for one with the Seven Dwarfs-or maybe it was the Smurfs. “But Gargamel and the Wicked Stepmother lived happily ever after.”
She frowned.
“If it were me standing up with one of my friends, I’d know how they met, how many people are standing up with her, what her dress looks like, and what colors everyone was wearing.”
And the groom’s blood type and credit rating?
“Do you even know where they’re going on the honeymoon?” she continued.
“Yeah, Costa Rica.”
“Why … Oh, never mind,” she said.
I glanced at the clock. It read 5:30 p.m. The rehearsal dinner was at 6 p.m. and we were still an hour away.
“We have to pull into the next truck stop,” I said.
“We just filled up.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I just remember I’ve got to buy them a present.”
Maybe I should learn to be more organized, or at least to keep my mouth shut.
***
Humor columnist Jason Offutt teaches journalism at Northwest Missouri State University and is not a snappy dresser at all. You can reach him through his Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com or by e-mailing him at jasonoffutt@hotmail.com.
