Wedding + Math = Whom to Invite

Part 1: Whom to Invite

Rather than wrestle with ambiguous criteria for choosing your wedding guests, why not plug each of them into the following formula? Decide how many guests you can afford to invite, then rank them according to the numerical values assigned by the following formula.

+10 points for members of the immediate family

+5 points for members of the extended family

+1 point for every year that you have known the potential guest

-1 point for every year it has been since the last time you heard from them

-5 points if it is someone you have never met

+ 5 points if you like them

-5 points if your better half dislikes them

+1 point if you expect them to give you a nice gift

-1 point if they don’t expect to be invited

-5 points if they belong to an entire group of people who could be (but do not expect to be) invited

+3 points if they have been endorsed by someone subsidizing the wedding

-10 points if they are a former significant other

+10 points for mutual friends of the bride and groom

-5 points for members of the opposite sex who are not mutual friends

+2 points if they congratulated you promptly on your engagement

-3 points if they congratulated you on Facebook and that was the first form of communication in several years

+1 point if you were invited to their wedding

+3 points if you went

-5 points if they will try to make out with your mother while in a drunken stupor during the reception

This should provide objective criteria by which to navigate an otherwise difficult decision.  Remember: this is your day and the numbers don’t lie.

The Epic Shenanigans of Adulthood

Part I: What

My long hiatus from blogging has brought with it much writing material. It’s not just an excuse. The “interruptions” in life can be a source of great blessing.

I am engaged and the wedding is in two months. I am nearly finished with my first year of Ph.D. studies. I am in the process of maybe selling a house, which has been complicated by ant number of issues. Unbeknownst to myself, I was without homeowner’s insurance during the earthquake, for example. But I digress.

My question is this: in what ways is adulthood qualitatively different from childhood?

I ask this because I am convinced that far too many adults have not abandoned their childhood selves and that, unless I am careful in the big decisions I face in my present, I will become one of them.

For the purposes of this essay, I will disregard such nuanced stages as “teenager” and “young adult.” I assume that if you are somewhere between 12 and 40, my discussion applies to you, as well as to many people outside that age range, which is simply my best guess at classifying those who are trying to figure out what it means to be grown up.

Children dream of becoming adults. Most of them do, anyway. Their games reflect this. But they do no want to become just any adults. While stereotypical roles reflect this –firemen, soldiers, astronauts, movie stars, princesses, and mothers – I think that even non-stereotypical playtime reflects this trend. My earliest career aspiration was to live in New York and own a costume shop, helped by a giant rabbit. My favorite book, “Busy Day, Busy People,” had somehow given me an inkling of the Big Apple. But I think, too, of my recent summers spent mowing the campus at the seminary. I wore a broad-brimmed hat to protect me from the sun and a bandana over my mouth and nose to keep out the dust and pollen. I heard from several seminary parents that their sons enjoyed “playing cowboy,” i.e., mowing the lawn like me.

Why do children want to grow up? Adults have apparent freedom and endless possibility. They come and go as they please. They stay up as late as they want. They spend money on whatever they want. They have power, beauty, strength, and knowledge to a degree that is barely imaginable for a child. A boy who longs to be strong knows that he will be stronger when he is a man. A girl who longs to be beautiful knows that she will be more beautiful as a woman. All children who long for adventure know that they will have greater means to travel and explore when they are older.

Yet if the standard children’s attitude is “I can’t wait to be an adult,” the standard adult response: “bills! [gripe, gripe] duty! [gripe gripe] if you only knew!” Too fraught with duty to dream of childhood, gripey grown-ups nonetheless know that they are missing something. As to what and why, I will devote my next post.

27 Ways to Lose your Balls

Few movies promise to be as utterly emasculating as this year’s 27 Dresses. As the title and trailer indicate, this movie ought to contain nothing that appeals to the typical male viewer. It’s refreshing, really, to see a major studio sending out a big #$&* you to their primary demographic.

“But it’s got Katherine Heigl,” some might argue. “She’s supposed to be hot.”

So was Princess Diana. Do you see me reading the biography?

What baffles me is that they’re not even trying for cross-over appeal. This isn’t a date movie. This is a cut-off-your-balls-for-a-few-hours-and-sew-them-back-on kind of movie. (Don’t ask me how they get sewed back on; I’m not a doctor; and yes, it’s “sewn.”)

In short: the title says it all. If your girlfriend/wife/signif-oth drags you to this one, she owes you big time. You just surrendered your manhood.

A Very Waterpark Michael Jackson Karaoke Christmas

I love my family.  I have always been aware that my family is a little bit weird.  I am, too.  But the older I am, the more openly weird my family becomes.  And so it was that we all spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day at the indoor water park at our hotel, going down the slides, singing karaoke, and watching old Michael Jackson music videos. 

 

The warm water rushed us down, giving birth to us a few dozen times.  Our voices frayed after hours on end singing songs to which only my father knew the words, laughing ourselves silly.  Our eyes blurred before the slow metamorphosis of the King of Pop, who managed to dance his way out of every imaginable crisis:  The thugs attack?  Dance!  Your peers question your badness?  Dance!  The pharaoh tries to kill you for your past fling with his wife?  Dance! 

 

And so it was that we, too, used music to resolve each crisis.  Grandma and Uncle Bob have subjected the love of my life to three hours of family history and show no sign of stopping?  Let’s sing!  Grandpa has lost his ability of speech and sits staring blankly at the nursing home ceiling?  Let’s sing!  Sing of the newborn King, of healing, of hope!  More than the presents, more than the laughter, and the reason for them both: Christ is born!