Eleven Days and Counting

Okay, married people, I get it now.

Grooms-to-be, I understand why, when I ran into you on the street, you looked like you'd just returned from your second tour of 'Nam and mumbled something about place settings before stumbling off in the opposite direction. Brides-in-waiting, I get why you would greet me at random encounters with big smiles and shouts of joy, then abruptly fall into heaving sobs and run to the nearest restroom. Fiancés, I know now why you brushed off every invitation to a drink, or a flick, or a four-minute telephone conversation with excuses that seemed, at the time, so flimsy as to be effectively nonexistent. Fiancées, I realize why, when I called your home to extend these invitations to your soon-to-be-betrothed, you shot down these invitations instantly and mercilessly, leaving me talking to an empty phone line before three words had escaped my mouth.

I understand the cardinal sin of not returning those little RSVP cards that, in my pre-pre-marriage life, I loved to use for bookmarks and coasters.

I understand why and how you could drop off the earth so suddenly and completely that you may have well enrolled in the FBI's Witness Protection Program.

I get it now. You were getting married.

Why haven't I updated my website in a week? Why haven't I returned that email you sent me a week ago, that call you gave me two weeks ago? Why haven't I watched that Beatles Anthology you loaned me? Listened to that CD? Taken me up on my open invitation to see JASON VS FREDDY? I mean, c'mon, man! It's JASON VS FREDDY!

Why? Why why why?

Um, no particular reason...