It's not that I don't like weddings. Actually,...

It's not that I don't like weddings.

Actually, I'm quite fond of weddings. Well, perhaps "fond" is too strong a word. I don't
mind weddings. I wouldn't even mind having one myself, one of these days. It's just
that I really, really don't like "Love Shack."

For those of you who have been fortunate enough to avoid hearing it, "Love Shack," by the
B-52s, is the worst song ever written. Oh, sure, note for note, "MacArthur Park" or "The
Greatest Love of All" or pretty much anything by Yoko Ono might be more difficult to listen
to, but you don't hear any of them that often. "Love Shack" shows up everywhere. High
school dances. Family reunions. High school reunions. And always, always at weddings.

I had just sat down to a pretty good slice of cake at my cousin Mike's wedding when I
heard the godawful rhythm begin pounding through the loudspeaker. My eyes narrowed;
I gritted my teeth (which made it difficult to eat the cake, which put me in an even worse
mood) and suffered through the song. At last, I thought, as the final "Henry!" echoed
through the room, that's over, and the music couldn't possibly get any worse, unless they
played the "chicken dance."

They played the "chicken dance."

And the Macarena, which I thought had been done away with by international treaty. And
the "YMCA," with costumes. So help me, they even played "It's Raining Men."

The thing was, this wasn't the wedding of some obscure relative or long-lost friend of a
friend. This wasMike's wedding, Mike who is more like a brother than a cousin to me,
Mike who (more importantly) introduced me to Stevie Ray Vaughan. Mike who took me to
see Clutch Grabwell and the Leadfoot Horns. The man has good taste in music.
Granted, he does have a Shania Twain album in the front seat of his car, but that's almost
understandable -- have you seen her in the "Man, I Feel Like a Woman" video?

In fact, Mike and I had talked to each other about this very subject not two years before,
at our cousin Cass' wedding. "Things are going to be different when one of us gets
married," we agreed, while the "Electric Slide" pulsed in the background. "There will be
no 'Hoky-Poky' at any wedding of ours."

"Absolutely," Mike had said.

"And no 'Mambo Number Five.' "

"I couldn't agree more," Mike had said.

"And... you have to promise me this... no 'Love Shack,' " I said.

"Agreed," Mike had said, and we'd clinked glasses, and drunk a whole hell of a lot,
because that's what we used to do at weddings.

I didn't drink much last night. I didn't dance, either, for obvious reasons. I had to do
something, so I ended up talking to quite a few of my relatives who knew me from when
"I was this high" and whom I'd never gotten to know at any of the other family functions
when I'd been busy drinking and complaining about the music.

I learned that my cousin Cass has almost earned her law degree. I learned that my
cousin Tom (I wasn't even sure I had a cousin Tom!) has been going through the same
kind of doubts about his career and the direction his life is going that I have. I put faces
to the names I'd heard about in stories over the years, people who turned out to be just
as interesting as I'd hoped they'd be.

"I've been paying a lot more attention to family," said Tom, who lives and works just a
few blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood. "I've started to realize how
important it is, how it means a lot more to me than I thought it did."

I never finished my conversation with Tom, because my mother grabbed my hand at the
beginning of Anne Murray's "Could I Have This Dance For The Rest of My Life." It isn't
a particular favorite of mine, but you don't turn down a dance with your own mother,
unless your grandmother asks to cut in. Which she did. (Actually, it was kind of
flattering; no one's ever asked to cut in to a dance with me before).

"I'm sorry," my grandmother said, "but this was the last song Pop and I ever danced to
together."

At the end of the evening, when the centerpieces for the tables had been given away
(yes, they did the silly dollar dance, but I didn't mind so much) and I'd walked my
grandmother's best friend out to her car, and I'd promised my aunt Gail and my aunt
Madeline that I'd try to visit, I stood outside and waited to see the expression on Mike's
face when he saw what myself and certain members of the wedding party had done to
his car.

Mike is protective of his car in the same way that the Chinese are protective of their
airspace. In fact, on any other occasion, I'd sooner have risked flying an F-14 over Beijing
than coming within twelve feet of Mike's car. This being his wedding, however, I felt
within my rights to wrap his car in toilet paper, tie beer cans to the trailer hitch, and
write many, many inappropriate things across the windows in flourescent marker.

Mike hated it. I knew he hated it. But he didn't say a word. He smiled, waved goodbye
to everyone, and left with his new bride. Of course, I found out later that they drove about
ten feet before cutting off the cans and tearing all the TP from the car.

But that wasn't the point. The point was that it didn't matter that Mike hated what we did
to his car: he wanted us to have a good time. It didn't matter that Mike hated "Love Shack"
and the "Macarena" and pretty much any song that used a synthesizer as its principal
instrument: he knew that the rest of his family and friends (with the exception of me)
wanted to hear them, and would take to the dance floor in droves. On a day
supposedly dedicated to himself and his wife, he did everything he could to
make sure everyone else was enjoying themselves.

There are a lot of different ways to show love, I guess, and that's one of them. Mike's off
on his honeymoon, now, and it will be a while before I go to another wedding, which is
a good thing. I have a lot to learn.