August 8, 2004

(The following C-File was read at the rehearsal dinner for a very special wedding in Fort Worth, Texas on August 6, 2004. The bride was Jennie Dixon, and the groom was my roommate, Taylor Vincent “T-Willie” “T-Dub” “Vince” “Stop Smiling At Me Like That” Williams, and I played the role of “Best Man of All,” so I wrote this for them to read as a toast. I’ll probably have more on the whole wedding experience later, but for now, I’m exhausted.)

It seems like it was only 2 years, 11 months, 6 days, 4 hours, 27 minutes, and 16 seconds ago when I first met Taylor, who was to be my roommate for nearly three straight years, which is somewhat longer than the average potluck roommate turnover time at Harding, that is, 37 minutes. Taylor and I had a lot in common from the start, but we didn’t really know that because he was in the habit, his freshman year, of curling into the fetal position in the corner of the dorm room covered in lab reports and calculus II problems for, sometimes, weeks at a time. But, after a while, he managed his schedule down from “impossible” to merely “unreasonable,” and we got to know each other quite well.

This was about the same time I first met Jennie, when Kyle Sapp and I asked her, for a video project, to watch Kyle devour fried rice without the benefit of silverware and act disgusted. She managed, somehow, to pull it off, and surprisingly enough, for a long time after the event she was willing to be seen with us in public.

Now, I am not always the most observant human being in the world, so my knowledge of Jennie and Taylor’s budding relationship was limited to mostly blunt statements of fact from Taylor sometimes months after the actual event. “Jennie and I are dating,” he would say. “Ok,” I would say, in a manner suggesting that I had known this for a long time already, perhaps, even before Jennie found out. “I’m going to ask Jennie to marry me,” he would say. “Ok,” I would say. “We’ve already booked the honeymoon cruise,” he would say. “We did NOT choose Carnival Cruise Line,” he would say. “Ok,” I said, because I am often exuberant in that way.

But I’m almost certain that, during those 3 years, somewhere, there was a relationship budding, blossoming, blooming, and then releasing entire pounds of pollen for the specific reason of turning my car yellow. Looking back, I remember them spending incredible amounts of time together, “together” meaning “in the vicinity of each other while accompanied by each one’s respective mound of overpriced textbooks.” They spent entire geologic eras on the phone with each other, telling each other sweet little nothings, most of them involving the unfairness of the 5:00 PM deadline on the latest nutrition project which Jennie DID, in fact, meet in several valid time zones if not Central, and she was not going to just sit back and take a zero because she did the work, dang it, not that she is bitter. In fact, my junior year I saw Taylor so little he might as well have been my pen pal from Guam, not that this stopped Taylor’s mom from making me into her personal secretary for messages for Taylor, nearly 44% of which actually reached Taylor before late April, I am proud to report.

But it’s all worth it to have Jennie and Taylor for friends. Taylor is the kind of friend it is always nice to have around whenever you, say, remark casually to yourself that you’ve never heard Beethoven’s 8th Symphony before. Hours could pass until curfew, even hours full of mind-occupying events such as Cleveland being attacked by UFO’s, and at bedtime, there would be Taylor, playing Beethoven’s 8th symphony for my benefit, because he cares, even when I hadn’t even remembered asking in the first place. He’s the kind of friend who does not mind alternately singing the words of embarrassing show tunes loudly in public with you, even after you have stopped and asked him to stop repeatedly. Jennie is the kind of friend who is always willing to give you a brilliant, mood-brightening smile and hug you for perhaps several days without letting go even though she has just had the worst day in the entire history of her life, as well as the lives of many other people. Because Jennie and Taylor are just that great. And I couldn’t be more thrilled that they are together. I wish them both a full, happy, long, and loving life together, blessed by God so that can be a blessing to everyone they meet, with as few overpriced college textbooks as possible.