• the217
• Life
• Till Death ...

You know that old joke about how many times you can look at the sun through a telescope? The answer is twice, once with each eye. After that, you’re blind. See, you can technically do it twice, but you really shouldn’t if you can help it at all. There are many other things that folks shouldn’t do more than once or twice. For example, I attempted to eat broccoli once as a child. That one time was plenty for me. It was something I was fairly sure I wouldn’t do again. Taking it even further, there are a few things that I really wasn’t sure if I would ever try at all. One of those was marriage.

It turns out that it’s something I’m about to do, um, actually this coming weekend, so I really shouldn’t be screwing around writing this little column when all this work needs to be done. Nevertheless, I suppose I can talk about it a little bit before I get back on that pesky “To Do” list.

Let’s start at the beginning, or at least the beginning as I remember it. It was toward the end of last summer. I was having a couple of beers at Hubers and watching a baseball game with my buddy, Jackson. Between innings, we were just talking about some general life stuff and he asked me if I ever planned to get married. I clearly remember shaking my head and saying that though I had nothing against the institution, I couldn’t begin to imagine anyone who could put up with my dumb-ass from this day forward.

As fate would have it, sometime around Thanksgiving of that same year, I found someone who would not only put up with my dumb-ass from that day forward, but that actually seemed to want such a thing. It was pretty apparent to both of us that this was the real deal, so we decided not to mess around. I asked her to marry me, she said yes, and we naively assumed the hard part was over. This was an incorrect assumption.

In an effort to appear like a decent person, I decided to ask her father for her hand in marriage. I had a plan of attack but when the moment came, I forgot everything I was going to say. Apparently, I said something about marrying his daughter. At his point he became as nervous as I was. I think he gave me his permission, but I was pretty close to passing out at that point, so I can’t be one hundred percent sure.

With all of that out of the way, it seemed like a straight shot to marriage. We both relaxed, enjoyed the moment, accepted the congratulations that came our way, and went about our business. It was going to be a small little wedding in June, and hells bells, you really don’t even have to plan for such a thing. Um, it turns out you do, or at least, you should... probably sometime before June.

I won’t put you through all of it, but let’s just say there are quite a few things that you have to do between the engagement and the wedding. These things are the sorts of things I’m not especially good at. We needed invitations; She took, care of that. We needed to send them out; She took care of that. She said I just needed to relax; It turns out she’s pretty smart and she knew that relaxing was one of the few things a man such as myself was capable of. I was about as helpful as a monkey at a chess match.

Time passed, rings were bought, dinners were planned, and I was still pretty much unscathed. It was really pretty simple. We loved each other and we were getting married. I was aware it was going to happen. I wanted it to happen. I just hadn’t really thought about the actual event of getting married except for the general logistics of where everyone was standing and that sort of thing.

Then, on Monday, I sort of got slapped in the face. It wasn’t my lovely bride that slapped me, though I would have understood if she had.

It was basically reality that did the slapping. We walked into the clerk’s office to get our marriage license and it all began to seem very real. You fill out some questions about yourself, make a few phone calls to find out where the hell your parents were born, fill that in, and they’re soon ready to hand over the paperwork you’ll need to complete the deal after the ceremony.

We raised our hands and swore an oath that the information we had just given was true and all of a sudden, it felt like my stomach was wrapping around my spine. I’m not sure what it was that made this the first time I freaked out a little. It is possible that I was nervous because I assumed this would be the point where the clerk removed my testicles for safekeeping. It turns out that myth isn’t true, by the way, but you never know.

We walked outside, paper in hand, and I kissed my bride-to-be and began breathing again. Breathing felt good and I remembered how much I enjoy it. She smiled at me and shook her head. I smiled back, knowing that after all this is over, just being together from now on will probably seem like a piece of cake.