Harrowing Tale II: The Reharrowing

Mice: Surprise!
Birds: Surprise!
Gus: Duh, duh, duh... Happy Birthday!

- Mice, Birds and Gus (a heartwarming scene), Cinderella



Above all, self-control.

- Stepmother (a different scene), Cinderella



Don't know what it is I did so wrong,
Now I know what I got,
It's just this song.
And it ain't easy to get back, takes so long.

- Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone), Cinderella




Starting a blog out with quotes makes you seem smartified!

- Me (Andy, I mean, this isn't something from) Cinderella



The following, ladies and gents, is the story of how I really tried to be funny this one time and instead made a sweet young lady cry. I've found that trying to be funny usually leads to so many downfalls on my part. In fact, I've found that trying usually leads to so many downfalls on my part. But it's like the guy said in that wildly popular screenplay: You take some 'try' and some 'umph' and something something... I don't remember. The point here is, folks that the following situation is what concerns me in this whole meeting new people venture. It's the sort of situation where I mean well, but... end up making a girl cry.

Okay, so there ain't no sugar coating, or life-lessoning this one folks, let's just get to it.

I work in an advertising agency, and that means a lot of drinking (just like Mad Men! Except a little sadder!) and several Fridays ago, my workmates and I gathered in someones cube to drink and chat. Somehow the conversation turned to relationships and marriage (we're an even split on single to taken around here) and in attendance was our newest employees, Jenna, a fresh-faced youngster who had not yet lost that twinkle of innocent optimism. Unfortunately the 'yet' part of that equation only had about five minutes left to live.

Jenna told us in a very self-effacing way that she had already planned out her wedding. Actually, she'd sort of always known the details of her wedding. This drew some gruff talk and light-hearted scoffs from the embittered amongst us, but to her credit, Jenna plowed right on through to what I like to call the oopsie roll center of her embarrassment pop. (Published writer!) No, but seriously, it took some self-confidence to admit that she had held on to her childhood marriage plans and I simply cannot foreshadow enough that I'm about to take an accidental shit all over her fairly adorable aspirations..

Disney World. Jenna wants to get married at Disney World in Florida. More specifically, she wants to get married in the big ol' castle in the middle of Disney World in Florida. Mixture of disbelief, mocking laughter, and morbid curiosity served with a dash of pity? Yeah, the bunch of us gathered around listening, we all went there as well. But Jenna is unflappable what with pulling up the website, showing us pictures, detailing the plans, and refusing to be flapped. She tells us that her father switched to a Disney Visa card so that he can start collecting points toward this wedding. She shows us the dress that she will wear from the Disney Princess Collection (Cinderella, y'all). She flies from this website to that, clicking automatically. She's done this a million times before.

And we're making little jokes here and there. We ask her if the guy has to dress up (Jenna is currently one of us singles), and she says that if he wants to, fine. If he isn't into it, Jenna says, then they'll have the wedding somewhere else. We ask if she needs to wear a crown (maybe glass slippers, someone mutters) and she says no, of course not. It's just something she always wanted to do. No big deal. When someone mentions that they didn't know there were such facilities inside the big ol' castle, and Jenna says, well sure there are. Jenna says that she will show us and she's already clicking, clicking, clicking.

She pulls up a picture of the big ol' plastic castle reception hall and if you'd asked me what I thought it was going to be (thankfully, no one did), the picture would have been the opposite. It's fucking classy, folks. A long white banquet table with a scarlet red runner. Classy ass plates and silverware. Enough room for everyone in the small world that it is, after all, but still cozy and welcoming. Not a Disney logo in sight. Not an elf, or dwarf, or dragon, or Gurgie, or fairy to be found. I'm as impressed as I am disappointed.

She pulls up a picture of the chapel (alter, marriage center, hitchin' post, whatever you want to call it) and again, it's the last thing on my cynical mind. It's grand, but tasteful and well-appointed (if anyone uses that term outside of a Frasier episode anymore), and set up to put a focus on the area where the couple will stand and pledge there love or some shit. It's beautiful, and I can't even believe it.

And now, I need to take you into my thought process over the next several seconds. Please note that surprisingly, in this situation, no one else will be able to hear what I'm thinking as sadly my life is not Dexter. Luckily, it's not True Blood, either. So, here is the best summary of the moment where I decide that I need to be clever, and like the best laid plans of mice and slightly cleverer mice, it all blows the fuck up.

I'll put it in italics and a wispy blue color so you can get a real sense of it:

I am currently mired in disbelief. I've been to Disney World. I've been to Disney World four times or so, and even though I was a wee child at the time and full of wonderment and joy, even little me could have used a break from the dancing and mouse ears and in-your-face like-it-or-not liquid crystal HAPPY that they all but inject into your overstimulated heart (reverse-Pulp-Fiction style). There's characters and pink and candy and Dumbo and fairies and whatnots every damn where. The shrubs and trees were sculpted to look like Disney! They perverted nature itself to shove more joy in your joyous joying face!

Suffice it to say that I'm bewildered when the pictures that Jenna show us are sans Disneyfication. So, I begin to think of a clever observation to make about this fact. But what to say, what to say! It has to be something good, summing up the situation, getting my disbelief in there and hinting at the fact that I've been to Disney world (name dropping a theme park, that's important to me). Sure I could just come out and say: "Hey! Where all the funny-like stuff at!? A-hyuk!" But I left my hillbilly ways when I left my childhood home on that hill. No, clever is what I'm going for here.

"What" I ask myself in a tone so sly, it very nearly becomes Paul Lynde, "if I were to make a quip about Mickey Mouse performing her wedding ceremony?" Oh, ho, ho. Clever!

"Or perhaps," I go on as though I hadn't struck pure fucking gold already, "I should posit the theory that Goofy, the beloved dog-like character of the Disney universe, would serve as her wedding officiate. And what would that be like? 'You may now kiss the bride: Gorsh!'"

I'm laughing the inside of my head off already.

"There's the rub," I think "I'll just go ahead and say something like that. The wording is unimportant! I'll just say something like that, and use the valuable seconds I would have wasted on the ins and outs of sentence structure to get ready for the waves of laughter I'm sure to incite! I'll determine which position best prepares me to be hoisted onto my teammates shoulders. A speech! I'll prepare a speech on how I cope with being so ever-lovingly fucking clever!

Get ready, world, for this joke about a Disney character performing Jenna's wedding ceremony will be so everfucking clever, it will have fucking blueprints and a fucking tail!


I smugly lean on a cube wall, and interrupt (fucking interrupt) something that someone is saying so that I can say the following:



"Say, Jenna. Apropos of nothing at all, let me ask you a question: Who would marry you?"



Quote: Who would marry you?



Exhibit A: Who would marry you?



Here lies Andy Grigg
"Who would marry you?"



Over the Top II: Who Would Marry You?
by Andy Grigg



Have faith in your dreams and some day,
Your rainbow will come smiling through,
No matter how your heart is grieving,
If you keep on believing,
Who would marry you?

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, music and lyrics by Andy Grigg.



There was a collective inhale of air. A collective eye widening. Collectively, the group thought: "...the fuck?" And then there was no explaining. No way to tell anyone what I meant to say. No way to stop the tears from springing to Jenna's eyes. No way to take it back. I interrupted a discussion about a girl's childhood dreams to say, in essence, 'like any of that's going to happen, you undesirable goon.'

This is my potential as a conversationalist. And I hope that it goes a long way to making the accomplishments heretofore and thus and hereafter seem down-right heroic.

And with that, I'm going to stop right here, right now... before being clever can again take it's toll.