At the end of the semester, I promised myself I'd post on my blog twice a week this summer. As is often the case when I set myself goals that seem insanely ambitious to me but that your average ten-year-old could complete without breaking a sweat, I failed miserably. More than two months have gone by, during which I have certainly accomplished a lot of other activities, as measured in the standard grad student productivity unit "Netflix Episodes Viewed."
In later posts I hope to explore my failure as a white person because it took me half a season to start laughing at Arrested Development and I gave up on Mad Men completely before I finished half the second season. I also plan to regale my readership with the tale of the epic sunburn that I suffered on a single afternoon on Wrightsville Beach last month, with the travails of attempting to parlay a bachelor's degree in English and Latin into a part-time job, and with the truth about what happens when one accompanies an energetic man who likes to swing dance to a wedding reception with an open bar. And of course there is a huge volume of material to be gleaned from a wonderful family road trip up the East Coast, which featured a New York City tour guide who maintained a casual indifference to historical fact, a pair of calves named Lewis and Clark, a New Jersey mechanic named Pat whose accent met all my expectations, and a traveling lemon verbena plant nicknamed "Liz Lemon."
But to start off, I will relate an amusing example of the kind of fun one can have at a bachelorette party in rural North Carolina. Regular readers (God bless you both) may recall that I had my first bridesmaid experience this summer, and it was everything I hoped for-- mostly funny, occasionally tearful (when I learned the reception would be dry) and educational, because my friend the bride made a lot of desultory remarks about the wedding industry (e. g., "I'm convinced that weddings have nothing to do with marriage," "I think every man should have to experience the horror that is David's Bridal," and, "No Pinterest! The last thing weddings need is more choices"). Needless to say, she is a friend I will keep forever, and as a thoughtful gesture of my love, I volunteered to come up with a lingerie game for her party.
Because I only really knew one of the other bridesmaids at this point, I decided I'd better keep my hands clean and go for something PG-rated; but I also didn't want to be responsible (God forbid) for anyone's boredom. A Google search found an elegant solution: I would secretly write down everything the bride said while opening her gifts, and then read them back as comments she might also make on her wedding night. It worked like a charm. The bride was so unwittingly successful at the game that there isn't much I can share without blushing, but some of my less-racy favorites include "How about if I DON'T," "Oh goodness, that one's going to be difficult," and "Yeah, you're welcome."
Ah, summertime. My last free summer, in fact. I'm glad I spent it watching all nine seasons of The Office and babysitting a plant and sleeping a reasonable amount at last, because it turns out I'm too old to stay up past midnight and function like a human the next day. Speaking of which, it's almost my bedtime, as evidenced by the fact that I'm struggling even more than usual to come up with a clever sign-off. Stay tuned for more examples of how your summer was more exciting than mine.
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