Nupitals

C. is his name. He's a short, balding man in his 40's, full of energy. He's been working at the condo for the last 8 years. He moved here from Wisconsin after he was "saved" by the Pentecostal church.

He lives 30 miles away in the country with his wife, who has a rare form of cancer that will eventually slowly kill her. So rare is the cancer that C. and his wife had to travel all the way to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota because no one here could diagnose it. Here, they just wrote her off as crazy.

His son is getting married at the age of 20 in a few weeks. Weddings in C.'s family are a big affair. His wedding had over 250 guests, and his son's will have over 500 (basically the sum of two separate congregations and 100 family members). As such, C.'s family is in charge of the wedding shower. The big hangup now are the name tags that designate where the guests will be seated.

C. is a man of many talents, but computers are not one of them. But he's learning fast. A few weeks ago I taught him how to write formulas in Excel. He now manages the condo's check book and credit card with the program.

But tonight was a more difficult challenge. The name tags (not exactly tags, but pieces of paper that are folded in half and sit on a table) had to be exactly 5.5 by 8.5 inches, with the name printed in a certain font and in the exact right place. Microsoft Word just wasn't designed to do such things. An hour and a half later, we finally figured out how to make it work.

His next project will be to get hundreds of water bottles, carefully remove the labels, and then apply customized labels bearing his family name.



This is such a different conception of marriage from my own. I view marriage as a formality, merely confirming what already exists. And if you're confirming what already exists, what's the point? Do you need a ceremony to confirm that you love each other? To show the world that you're committed? Does anything real actually change afterwards? Britney Spear's 55 hour marriage is sacrosanct?

There is no need for pomp and circumstance. There's no need to invite hundreds of people, who come only for the free food and booze. After all, it's just a piece of paper. What's real and important lies far, far beneath that.