A virus can grow, reproduce and spread out of control. You don't need Petri dishes, slides or microscopes to observe this. All you need for this observation is to be involved with a Wedding.
....If you don't like the pandemic analogy, picture each element of a Wedding as a domino lined up in a row. This delicate pattern needs only a flick of the finger to start a chain reaction, causing each piece in turn to topple.
....Today is Saturday, the eve of the Wedding. You would think there would be a cessation of critical activity. Everything should be ready to go. One would think!
....I'm getting a little ahead of myself because Friday was not exactly smooth sailing either. That day began with me returning to the tiling job that I had managed to get about one-third done the previous day. Meanwhile my wife was back to tearing up the front of the house. A mountain of furniture, lamps, radios, etc., was growing in the dining room. I did have to make one comment regarding the furniture, though. "Why are we removing the end tables and lamps? The members of the Wedding Party have never seen them before? Are they considered out of style now?" The blank frowning stare was the only answer offered.
....To say that tensions were on an even keel, would have me committing perjury. While I'm not under oath, I see no reason to lie either. Once it was established that I was going to finish laying the tile before I even considered touching that growing mountain, every thing seemed to move along, albeit with little or no conversation. Appearing baptized by immersion in the baby-diaper-do-do-yellow tile glue, I finally finished the floor. The last four tiles all required compound cuts and took nearly as long as the other twelve to lay.
....All the time I had been working on the back hall floor, the telephone had been perpetually ringing! Think of our house this week as Wedding Central, it is our daughter getting married after all. News flashes, reports from the other participating parties were pouring in. It wasn't good news either. I didn't need to listen to the phone conversations, indeed the stream of obscenities assaulting my ears told me what kind of news was contained in each call. How much do I need to tell thee? Let me count the ways.
....Inexplicably, the woman who owned the Village Green where the Wedding was to be held, suddenly came down with a severe case of no help! She didn't know if she was going to be able to have the hall ready! The silence was deafening, but I could feel the static arcing from the hairs on the back of my wife's neck. If that wasn't enough, of the four tuxedos picked up to that point, four weren't right. My attempts at glue removal were met with disdain as if I had something better and more productive to do.
....Dictated by the demands of my wife and by the clock, I had bend to will of the clock. I had to hit the highway soon and try on my tux! If anything was wrong with it, the sooner I found out, the better to allow them time to rectify the problem. As I was getting dressed for that errand another tuxedo report came in. This time the shirt sleeves were much too long. That was the father of the groom, but he was staying there until it was fixed. The time was 4pm, the height of the rush hour traffic leaving Boston for points North, the same direction I had to navigate. The traffic was in a word, horrible.
....Nearly an hour later, I tried on what proved to be the closest to a perfect fit at the time. Well, the shirt was a little big but the vest and jacket would hide that. All the lengths of sleeves and legs were perfect. The shoes fit to a tee. My daughter, who had accompanied me there, didn't like the way the pleated front of the pants looked however. She called it a butt-lap. I saw what she meant, a bubble if you will, formed in the front of the pants. As it turns out, all of the pants of the other men fit the same way. Oh well. For $125 for one day was I expecting perfection? I was getting what I paid for, a $125 rental with a butt-lap.
....While I was on my excursion, my wife was in transit to help out at the hall. Funny, I don't remember my wife telling me she had taken a job at the Village green! Seriously, under the circumstances, she had no choice. From her point of view, which I fully understand, she had visions of everyone showing up to a room full of empty tables with no favors, place settings or flowers. My assistance was not required I was told, besides I had a mountain in the dining room needing my attention.
....As you can well imagine, my wife had already given copious amounts of blood, sweat and tears over the last several months planning for this Wedding. She wasn't about to let a little thing like the Village Green's shortage of staff ruin her daughter's big day. Too much time and too much money had already been put into this celebration.
....I managed to turn the mountain into a hillock after I got home, leaving the heaviest pieces for the next day. The bending and kneeling from the tiling job had put enough wear and tear on my back for one day as it was. When the phone rang, I just knew it had to be another tuxedo report. A psychic I am not, but a tuxedo problem seemed to have the highest probability over anything else. Sure enough, it was my daughter. Almost nothing was right about the groom's tuxedo!
....When my wife returned home, I learned that she, my daughter and the mother of the groom would be returning to the hall the next morning. For all intensive purposes they were setting up the hall themselves. I asked no questions. What she wanted me to know, she would offer it, unsolicited ...Eventually. The rule of thumb was knowledge on a need to know basis only!
No.370
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