I Totally Meant to Do That by Jane Borden

Author:Jane Borden [Borden, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-46464-4
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

What? No! That … that’s the same thing!!! Although I admire women who can write about their New York love lives, I am not one of them. But I can’t expect people back home to understand this, because Sarah Jessica Parker ruined it for the rest of us.

Years after Sex and the City has been canceled, it still exerts its influence, spreads its myths. I am nothing like Carrie Bradshaw! First of all, I can’t afford to live in Manhattan. Also: I have more than three friends, I do not squeal, my gay friends aren’t bitchy, and this phrase has never been a part of my audible inner monologue: “I couldn’t help but wonder.…”

Regardless, again and again, I encounter people back home who imagine that my life in New York is spent pouting at rich men from inside a too tight, two-tone poof dress, which I will later stain with tears.

Aargh!

I wish I didn’t know that experience so well, but it is part and parcel of being Southern-wedding omniscient. I have seen it all before. Whether you need to know about HBO-perpetuated stereotypes, or choreography as part of a cheerleading-squad-sized bridal party, I’m your gal. And let’s be honest, you don’t have a lot of other options. If you get an invitation to a rehearsal dinner party and the dress code is listed as “Delta casual,” you can either come to me or hike through the Mississippi swamps seeking answers from an ancient shaman, because one thing is certain: You cannot ask the bride.

I began to experience these weekends as unique only after moving to New York, when home began to appear strange. Of course, most of the weddings I’ve attended have been during that period anyway—the postcollege period—twenty-eight of the forty-one, to be exact. That’s a lot of plane flights.

In one particularly busy summer—weddings happen in waves, one of the many patterns noticeable from a macro view (another: the canonization of “Hey Ya”)—I flew south for seven ceremonies. I was like a bird that couldn’t grasp the fundamentals of migration. Whether on a sparrow’s constitution or a girl’s wallet, that is expensive behavior. So I picked up a second job waiting tables; this was that time I told you about, the summer I worked at Chumley’s. When I revealed the aim of my enterprise to a coworker, her eyes grew twice their size.

“How many weddings?” she asked.

“Seven.”

“In one summer?”

“Well,” I said, “there are actually eight but two are the same weekend and, unfortunately, in different states.”

“You mean you’re going to all seven?” she stammered. “Couldn’t you have said ‘no’ to some?”

I gave her a quizzical look. The inner question instigating my expression was: Why would I say no? But that did not come out of my mouth, for although I am slow enough to have never before considered that the “regretfully declines” option on a wedding invitation is in fact an option, I am quick enough to know that admitting such would betray too much. Instead, I uncrossed my

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