June 15, 2005

Let's say you're a newly wedded couple, or, perhaps, to avoid legal restrictions in states other than, say, Massachusetts, one member of a newly wedded couple, and let's also say, because we are talkative, that your parents have a lot of rich friends – rich friends who, all though you have never so much as heard of them apart from all the various boulevards named after them, desire to show their gratitude to your parents by lavishing gifts on you. It doesn't sound like such a bad deal, right? Everybody likes to be lavished by unknowns every once in a while.

You might, if you are a naïve unmarried male (is there any other kind?), be imagining that these rich friends might buy you something like a yacht. Or if not a yacht, then at least something that flies around on a lake and makes VROOM noises. Or even, if that's asking for too much, a stereo system would be nice. Well, okay, to be honest, as a newlywed couple, what you could really use is some cash for the next set of textbooks you will be forced to buy but never once forced to open ( Infectious Diseases of the Urinary Tract And You! – $699.99), or maybe to pay rent. Ah ha, but you are a naïve unmarried male, ho ho! For you are getting none of that! No, your parents' wealthy compadres do not give one whit * about what you need or what you want or even what you might be able to pawn . Oh no. Don't even worry about it. You're getting china.

Oh sure, those other newlyweds who got gifts only from people who know and love them personally will be jealous that they only got useful and tasteful but not extravagant things. But they don't have to live with the china. Nor do they have to figure out where to put it. This is because, as a result of being newlyweds, you will live in an apartment where you will be lucky to find enough room for an extra roll of toilet paper. That gorgeous, huge, silver-plated spork will just have to go in the silverware drawer with the same fork you use to turn the smoke detector off every night at 3 AM when it goes off for no reason. And the china… well… you really can't put it in a cabinet, can you? I mean, that's where ordinary people put ordinary plates that you might from time to time, say, eat off of. No sane person would put the china there for crying out loud! No, fine china demands a fine china cabinet! And a fine china cabinet demands regular cleaning and dusting and absolutely no horseplay anywhere with four hundred yards of it, because a single vibration of fun might cause the china to become traumatized and require expensive therapy.

People who have been married a long time like to talk about how, back in the old days, newlyweds had it tough . “Why, in my day,” they are all the time saying using a prospector accent circa 1849, “we didn't have any of these foo-foo ‘silverware' doohickeys! We saved for a year to order take out Chinese and have been using the disposable chopsticks they gave us ever since!” They felt the same way about furniture. “We feel the same way about furniture,” they say. Then they offer you a packet of red pepper from Sbarro.

Newlyweds have come a long way since those days, though. Now, of course, the accents of Welsh livery stablemen circa 1764 are more popular. And, also, they have more stuff. They are practically swimming in stuff. They have numerous cabinets chocked full of stuff with each one helpfully labeled (“Stuff,” the labels say). Where does all the stuff come from? First off, there's the stuff from the wedding. You can't throw THAT away. Good gosh! That would be like admitting that they spent numerous arduous months, maybe even YEARS, preparing for an event that lasted, if the relatives are lucky, 82 minutes. So THAT all has to be kept. Also every stuffed animal either of them have ever owned or that either of their siblings ever owned but whose removal was not noticed. THEY have to find happy new homes as well. Also old textbooks, just in case some brave student ever wins a class action lawsuit against McGraw-Hill, or less likely, you ever have to remember what you learned in calculus 2.

It all has to go somewhere, and don't forget bathroom stuff, laundry stuff, cups, computers, snow globes, souvenirs from Jamaica (tourism motto: “So people can say they've been there!”), and about 972 plastic bins containing “miscellaneous.” And, not only does it have to find someplace to accumulate dust for a year, it all has to fit through the front door . As most Harding apartments outside of Armstrong do not come with collapsible walls, the door is the only way to get furniture in to the apartment, and the door is, by mysterious coincidence, always two inches too short to fit the article of furniture through. That is UNLESS the piece of furniture is tilted at the most heinous possible angle. This is the the angle that positions the weight of the furniture at that exact point of equilibrium at which, if you grip the wood in the wrong place, your hand could be ripped unceremoniously from your body, and then the bride would have one more thing to worry about and she would probably start attacking the china with the silver plated spork. Of course, if it couldn't go in the door at all you could just throw up your hands and leave the furniture in the alleyway (“For that romantic backalley Brooklyn feeling!”) like sane people. But as it might possibly go in IF everybody throws his or her back out, there's no sense in not giving at least one extremely painful try.

Thank goodness for professional movers, right? Yesterday, at the apartment of my newly wedded brother and (by odd happenstance) his wife, professional movers brought in the washer and dryer. This was ok by me, because I was a little busy drinking a Diet Coke at the time and couldn't be bothered. Even better, the professional movers, before the washer had even cleared the door, dinted the thing against the wall. As a conciliatory gesture, they offered a 10% discount on the washer. This was very lucky, because with that money my brother might now be able to afford groceries.

Oh well, even if they end up starving, they can at least admire the china while they waste away. Ah, young love!

* 10 whits = 1 hoot