Of Water and Wedding

The Dragon Boat Festival is over for another year. Our Tide Riders actually moved up a division, taking Bronze in the Borealis C final. Yeah, we did get Gold last year, but a Bronze in a higher division beats Gold in a lower one, and means our overall time has improved. So, yay us! It was a damp-ish and rainy weekend, but bearable when hanging and paddling with friends and co-workers. We had a second team on the water, the Amazons - they showed great rhythm and timing, but came in third in all of their heats. However, they came this close to winning $10,000.00. There was an arbitrarily-chosen finish time in a sealed envelope and whatever team finished with that specific time would win the cash. The time in the envelope was 3:32. Amazons finished one of their heats in 3:33. Sigh - so close!

I have already sent a brief article about the Festival and our placements to the person at work who does the in-house publication - she will be running it in next Monday's edition. Sweet!, as our team captain would say.

And now, to the wedding................

On Saturday evening my father got married. This is the man who had been a bachelor for 48 years, since he and my mother separated in 1959. The man who swore all along that he would never, ever even live with a woman, let alone marry again. The man who was happy, he declared, living on his own. So, his announcement a couple of months ago that he was going to marry the woman he'd been dating for about six months took us all by surprise, to say the least. More like............WHAT THE FUCK? HAS HE BEEN REPLACED BY A POD PERSON? Anyway, once the initial shock wore off, we slowly came to accept that this would happen. At least she made him happy - the cranky old guy we'd been seeing for the past few years was gone, replaced by the world's oldest living teenager in love.

So, fast forward to the wedding. First off, I had been a bit uneasy about the fact that no one had arranged any kind of get-together for our family to meet her family. I found out why - besides Pop believing that he wasn't marrying her family, just her, so none of this "blended' family stuff. Thank God!!!!!!! I would not want to be "blended" with that bunch! As my boyfriend put it, "the Dalton Gang meets the Brady Bunch". I should have twigged to the sheer rudeness of her family when I saw that the table closest to the front of the room, thus closest to the actual ceremony was for......her GRANDCHILDREN! Yes, folks, the entitlement-zilla brat offspring of the bride's kids dictated almost everything about the evening. First there were the three teen-aged ones who had the emcee (my uncle) announce they were singing a song they "wrote" for the couple - no, they merely sang over/along with a recording of "I Hope You Dance". Badly. Then there was the 10-year-old who had a fit of weeping histrionics and had to be cajoled into warbling (off-key) a few banal verses for her "Nanny".

I, the groom's daughter, met two of the bride's three sons and her daughter. I was not introduced to said sons' wives, nor to the husband of the daughter, nor to the third son. My only interactions with the grandchildren was them shoving rudely into the buffet line in front of me. The groom's daughters and grandchildren, as well as his brothers & sisters, were relegated to the back two tables of the room. Nice, huh? Oh, the bride's son's in-laws got to share a table with my two aunties (both over 78) and my two uncles (one near 80, the other over 70) and their spouses. Can we say treated like second-class citizens?

Enough about the Brady Bunch and their appalling lack of even the most basic of manners, though. Let's talk about the ceremony itself. The officiant was a Justice of the Peace they'd selected from a list at city hall. She had a very stilted delivery and diction that reminded me of Peter Cook playing the Archbishop in "The Princess Bride". I had to stifle giggles as I imagined her droning........"mawwaige. And wuuv, twue wuuv........." I wasn't the only one - my niece and her boyfriend saw the connection, too, as did my brother-in-law.

Bottom line - while I am happy my Pop has found someone who makes him happy, and I do like the woman, I am really, really glad that I will not have to endure "family" gatherings with her totally rude and clueless clan. I'd be tempted to start a brawl with them if I had to do that. Really. And I know I'd win - because we're tougher!