It's An Illness, I Tell You, An Illness

      Either that, or there's something in the groundwater this year, as I've just learned that there will be a fifth wedding this year, as another one of my cousins is about to get hitched in three weeks. Crimony, I remember keeping an eye on this kid when he was a baby. This is profoundly disturbing, as if all of the couples that I know in the world have suddenly gone Stepford on me. Everyone is collectivizing. Everyone, that is, but yours truly of whom the deed of collectivizing is as doomed as a pair of spandex pants on Della Reese (and just as appealing a proposition). Things are changing. Hardened hearts are becoming as soft as pumice stones; cynics are becoming googly-eyed romantics; the people that used to say "never" are saying things like "I do" and "I will." I'm feeling like Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers realizing that everyone he knows has been replaced. There's also the opposite sentiment, not one I cling to, but which I can no more avoid than anyone, the awkward wondering why everyone else is suddenly vaulting into wedded briss, er, bliss, while I trundle on unable to fathom even being involved, let alone in love. The thought of getting M'ed is as incomprehensible to me as a Mongolian folk-song. (The best response to this is one of a friends': "you can't change a good thing.") One starts to wonder if one has become the kid left behind while the other kids are promoted to the next grade. Thankfully, that's not the way I look at it all most of the time; my metaphor is that I'm the lemming standing aside wondering why the hell everyone else is rushing over the cliff. Me, cynical? Me, the adherent to Spencer's Law ("Murphy was an optimist")? Not in your wildest, most intensely-lubricated fantasies. But now I'm convinced: there has to be something in the water. Thank Darwin I don't drink... water. Speaking of which, it's time for a nightcap. Cheers.