FORE! HE'S A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW!: My brother recently married his longtime girlfriend—married her on the grounds of one of the many state prisons that dot the landscape around our happy little burg, in fact, although I don’t think the location necessarily reflects his views of marriage as an institution…but it might—and I am not sure why he bothered getting married after fourteen years of cohabitation without benefit of judge or clergy. This is just one of those mysteries of modern life that just zips by me without explanation, I suppose. I am not sure what he sees in the girlfriend now that is any different from what he’s seen in the past fourteen years, and I am still trying to figure out what she sees in him at all. I’ve known him a lot longer than fourteen years and I’m still looking for ways to deny that there’s any biological link between us. It hasn’t worked so far but I haven’t given up trying.

That, however, is not the point of this particular screed. Scattered amongst the diverse friends, relatives, and other assorted humanity one finds at such events were my brother’s golfing buddies, a group immediately identifiable by the loud Hawaiian shirts they wore and the oversized Cuban cigars they smoked. If that weren't enough, they were the only people at the wedding wearing shorts. Now, I am not entirely sure why this bothers me; I am, at best, merely a disinterested observer of the phenomenon; but there is something about guests showing up at a wedding dressed as though they expected a golf game to break out halfway through the ceremony that somehow or other rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it’s because I spent over six hundred dollars on a new suit for this wedding and I could have just shown up in my Dockers and sneakers and who would have known the difference?

I don't mind shelling out the money...well, that's a lie, I do mind shelling out the money, it's just I wouldn't mind it as much if I knew everyone else at the wedding was in the same predicament. This is hard to do when there's a whole slew of guys dressed like cabana boys standing in the center aisle practicing their putting skills. The mind boggles at what would have happened if football season had started already. I keep thinking of the bride trying to make an end run around my brother's defensive line (and his golf buddies are big enough to be a defensive line; most of them look like junior league sumo wrestlers) while my brother snuck off the field with no one noticing. He's often maintained that the best place to hold a wedding is in an airport, where it is possible to get lost in the crowd on your way to the chapel and then get out of town before the bride knows what's happened, but this may just be my brother indulging his innate cynicism, although it does sound like good advice to me.