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27 November 2002The Best Of… IIIDear Sir: No doubt your daughter has now informed you of our intention to elope in Reno rather than stay for the whole church-wedding thing. While our intentions seem to be simultaneously selfish and inconsiderate, you will most likely find the underlying reasons to be no better, so I’ll spare you a fascinating discussion of the inner workings of our psyches. After all, if it were indeed possible to translate our reasons from their current form into language you would be able to comprehend, we would have done so already and saved us both the trouble and effort of attempting to understand one another. You must believe that I wish it were possible to demonstrate my affection for you and the family I’m soon to wander into through a big wedding, but Brenda and I both feel that trying to explain the relationship to my best man for the toast is simply too involved. How can mere words express the depths of our love? This morning, lying beside her, I poked her in the ribs to wake her up. (She’s adorable in the morning, especially when she’s grumpy.) She rolled over and turned her back toward me. I poked her again, and she hit me with a pillow, muttering mild obscenities about my morning habits. How could this be anything but true love? I hope you can understand as it has been so long since you’ve been in love as Brenda and I are. I was thumbing through Bride magazine for some dress ideas (for your daughter, not me—I try to limit my dress-wearing to special occasions) and I encountered a letter that begged the resident wedding guru to provide a brief synopsis of the advantages of less traditional weddings1 over Wagner’s wedding tune2. She replied that she and her three former husbands had all tried traditional weddings, and the ceremonies had set a funeral pall on the remainder of each marriage (six months in once case, two years for the longest). She went on to discuss why it was better to avoid funeral parlor weddings and perhaps opt for something more eccentric. As Brenda and I would rather avoid the magazine lady’s marriage woes, we thought we’d try Reno. We’ve all heard of people who did silly things at their weddings-the groom wears a sign that says “kick me”; the guests throw pies rather than rice; the newlyweds release angry geese instead of doves or pigeons; the clergyman officiating the service does so in the nude—but Brenda and I feel it would be like playing Mozart at a funeral on a kazoo. Hence the inherent ridiculousness of a Reno wedding: Elvis (They do they have Elvis in Reno, do they not? If not, we’ll simply have to go to Vegas), an express-line wedding where we simply insert our names in the right pauses, the unquestionable knowledge that we’re doing the right thing. It’s been difficult to understand just why Brenda worked so hard to convince me of the Reno wedding. I finally concluded that it’s all your fault. The times, they are a-changin’. When Ben Spock wrote his original book on child-rearing, Brenda was not yet born. Yet it is evident that you raised (poor) Brenda utilizing many of the then-popular fads in child-raising. (Have you any idea how long it’s taken me to coax her out of the Spock-created prison? Thank God she’s had the sense to listen to me and come to her senses.)3 In a remarkably short period of time after the first publication of the book, Spock has lost favor with the educated, replaced instead with far more insightful understandings of raising children (although he seems to have maintained his hold on the popular imagination of the dullest cretins)4. I cannot fault you alone, of course. There were, no doubt, innumerable influences on your daily decisions regarding Brenda’s upbringing. It might be far easier to lay the blame at the feet of your parents-there’s no sense in holding onto any more guilt than absolutely necessary. (The society of the victim is marvelously freeing somehow.) Brenda and I went shopping for groceries last week. I decided I wanted some salsa5 so I left Brenda and the cart. I found what I wanted, and I wandered back toward where I’d seen her last. I finally found her in the ice cream aisle, staring blankly at Rocky Road, Chunky Monkey, Heavenly Hash, Neapolitan, Vanilla (all-natural and artificially-flavored), Triple-fudge-extra-chocolate-chunks-chunk-funk-love (with extra fudge bits for good measure), and all the rest. I watched her for a few minutes as she opened this door (behind which sat various incarnations of strange flavors, all related to broccoli), then that (with all sorts of chocolates), then this (vanilla), then that (sorbets), ‘til finally I asked her if she’d found a flavor she liked. She looked up, suddenly blank. She opened a door at random, thrust in her hand, and withdrew the first flavor her hand encountered. That was the best ice cream we’ve ever shared. Notwithstanding the wonderful flavor and consistency of the ice cream, I find it fascinating that her method of selection bordered on nearly random rather than deliberate. When I interrogated her later, she refused to reveal her rationale, preferring instead to drift off to sleep while murmuring sweet nothings. Remembering what I’d read in Interrogation: Techniques and Tricks to Secure Evidence6, I quietly questioned her in her sleep, revealing all the answers to all sorts of questions. Unfortunately, she still didn’t tell me why she utilized such an unsystematic ice-cream selection process. But I must conclude, based on her behavior, that the blame falls directly onto your shoulders (and onto whomever else you choose to share your guilt with). Such an inefficient and error-prone method of decision-making must be result of substandard socialization within the home. But I promise to free her from the shackles of her upbringing, and bring her into a glorious new world of decisiveness and efficiency. One last story: Brenda and I visited a small museum dedicated to the history of the desk. In the back, near the desks of the 1920s, she turned to me, placed her hands on my face, and kissed me. That was all. Nothing said. Decisive and efficient. Forever. Cordially, Footnotes |
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