Cross country

I had just arrived at my row on the flight from Dayton to Dallas. A woman in the row behind me said, "Hey, would you like to sit back here?...Or would you rather have the window seat?" I figured she had a reason other than getting off the aisle for wanting to switch, but she just looked at me, so I said, "I'd rather have the window seat." I settled into my seat while the woman said to someone near her, "I tried." Later, when everyone was on board, a man two rows up (in the window seat) turned around and said to me, "Would you be willing to switch seats?"

I waited. He looked at me. I said, "Why?"

"Because that's my fiancée, and he's her husband," he said, nodding at people in the general direction of my neighbor and the woman behind me. I consented. I wonder whether that woman thought I agreed to the man's request because he was a man, or because he was the second request, rather than because he gave me a reason--even though I had to ask for it. I don't think it was unreasonable of me to want a reason.

The wedding was nice. There were about 150 people in Aunt Karolyn's (and now Mike's) backyard. I had been assigned the job of greeter, which I started to resent very quickly as I stood in the front in the sun and listened to the group of assigned traffic controllers talk about how difficult their women were. (One of them had brought his pregnant fiancée, and the fiancée was wearing an extremely tight white dress. Dad said perhaps she didn't want people to mistake her as fat. I don't think that would have happened, though.) The ceremony was very nice; they planted a rose of Sharon together and exchanged tokens and they both cried.

I also resented the cake-cutting--not the job itself so much as the woman who asked us to cut her a piece from the fourth tier when the second tier was the same flavor (white) and was merely less pretty. A man came up and asked for a second piece for his wife, and added, "She's pregnant, so she's excused from everything food-related." I said something about how maybe she was, but he wasn't, and Mom told me you don't say things like that. I meant that he was doing the food-related stuff for her--I think; I don't even remember really now--but I guess I can see how that came out wrong. Anyway, otherwise the day was fine, though I didn't get to talk to anyone as much as I would have liked to. That night we talked about my career prospects and plans, and Mom broke into a harangue about how I'm too sarcastic and that's why nobody likes me. I'm finding I still resent that. Usually I don't after a day or so. I was very curmudgeonly most of the weekend, come to think of it. Maybe it was a good thing I had to leave so soon.