A Young, Single Guy's View of Wedding Receptions

Looking to score free food whenever I can, I recently accepted an invitation to attend a wedding reception of a close friend.  One might wonder, “If he’s a close friend why did it take free food to get you to go?”  Let me explain.

I hate almost everything about wedding receptions.  “Almost” here is used because I like the free food.  Here are a couple of things I don’t like about receptions.

#1 Dancing

The success of dancing at a reception is solely based off of the amount of people who participate. Since 99% of people who attend a reception attend out of sheer obligation almost nobody ever wants to dance.

Knowing that nobody likes to dance at receptions the D.J. at this one guilt tripped everybody into doing the chicken dance by saying if we didn’t we would ruin the couple’s entire wedding day.  As much as I want the couple’s wedding to be a happy one I firmly believe that the chicken dance is just not something adults should do in public.  Stumble out of a bar? Yes.  Threaten a referee at your daughter’s 7^th grade basketball game? Sure.  Vote for Rick Santorum?  Why not?  But the chicken dance?  Sorry, I’m a grown man. 

Unknowing how to escape the inevitable I frantically searched the room for another alternative.  I had hit the dessert table four times already; another trip would just prove I was stalling.  I had to think fast.

I pulled my iPod touch out of my pocket and started to pretend like I was filming everybody else.  The lack of a recording light on Apple products made it the perfect disguise.  While I was pretending to record an older gentleman walked up to me and said “This is great! Can I get a copy of this?”  A copy?  It’s digital.  But not wanting to blow my cover I had to play along. “Sure thing!”  I said with a smile as I gave thumbs up.

#2 Traditions 

I’ve never been able to find enthusiasm for wedding reception traditions.  Being a single guy in my early 20’s at every reception I go to I have to participate in the event where the bride throws her garter (or whatever you call that supposedly sexy thing women sometimes wear around their thigh) and whomever the gentlemen who catches it is the next to get married (I think).  For obvious reasons my lack of enthusiasm for this tradition is shared among my peers.  When the bride threw the garter we all ran like combat soldiers fleeing from an incoming barrage of hand grenades.  One guy jumped under a table, another ran out to his car, and I ran back to the dessert table.

I also hate the cutting of the cake.  Why is that a spectacle?  Why?  Under what other scenario would anybody give a crap about somebody cutting a cake?  “But Isaac it’s so cute to watch the couple feed each other the cake.  Oh look!  They got in a flirty little cake fight and ended up shoving it in each other’s faces!  Isn’t it cute?”  No it’s not.  That happens every single time.  Their cute little cake fight is what’s standing between me and cake, and I hate anything that stands between me and cake.

The bottom line is that wedding receptions are just a girl thing.  After the reception a girlfriend of mine asked me a series of questions involving the reception. 

“What was the bride’s dress like?” 

“Um, white I guess.”

“What were the colors?” 

“Well, the baked potatoes were brown, the brownies were brown.  I guess the colors were brown.”

“What song did the bride dance to with her father?”

“Look, quit asking me all of these questions!  I need to go make a copy of the chicken dance video.”

Volcanoes, Death and Mediocre Professors

As this current semester rolled around I really needed to take another science class to finish off my associates degree.  Science has never been my stronghold.  The only thing I ever understood about science was volcanos and that was just because I made one out of clay every single year.  Because of that I am now an expert on volcanos.  For example I know that to make a volcano erupt God pours the perfect combination of baking soda and vinegar into the hole at the top of the volcano, a hole which exists because God stuck his finger in the top when the earth was still moldable.  When the volcano juice (as it’s known in the science community) spills out of the top of a volcano it usually comes out way faster than anyone expected and gets all over the table and spills on somebody’s pants leaving a sour smelling stain in their greater crotch area.  That person will then spend the rest of the day trying to convince others that they did not pee their pants.

My clay volcanos never failed to get me a good science grade until that fateful day in 10^th grade biology when I tried to turn another volcano in as my final project.  My teacher was one of those obnoxious young teachers that thought his efforts in the classroom were going to inspire us to accomplish great things in life.  He put his heart and soul all semester into trying to help us to appreciate the wonders of living organisms, to realize the beauty of a blood-flow system, to grasp the majesty and magnitude of a cell.  Boy was he disappointed when I turned in a clay volcano for my final project.  I had a friend who took the same class the next year.  He said all they did was watch videos.

Knowing science was going to be a major hurdle I spent four hours on ratemyprofessors.com trying to find the easiest professor I could.  I kept reading reviews that would say things like

“This professor is excellent! He makes you earn your grade but he is worth it!” 

“Best professor ever! I grew so much in his class!  He made us work really hard but I grew a lot!” 

I don’t need any crap like that.  My attitude toward college is “just give me my freakin’ credit and let me get out of here.”  Finally after literally 4 hours of searching I found a review that said

“This professor is boring as snot but it’s an easy A.” 

Perfect!  Sign me up!

I registered for that professor’s class without even knowing what the subject was.  I didn’t care.  Supposedly it was the easiest way out and I was sticking with it.  It did say on my schedule that the abbreviation for the class was GEO so I just assumed it was a geology class.  For the first three class periods the professor kept talking about maps and elevations and climate regions.  I kept thinking “This is geology class, when are we going to get to the rocks?”  I was talking with a friend about it and she suggested that perhaps it was a geography class instead of a geology class.  Intrigued by the possibility I whipped out my syllabus and sure enough Geography 1010 written in bolded lettering right at the top.

I guess if I can’t even figure out what class I am in I should be in the easiest class possible.  I just really hope nobody figures out where that sour smelling stain on my pants came from.