"And that white dress she's wearing you haven't seen for a while…"-Airborne Toxic Event

Do you know who died the other day? George Carlin. It's something MyUnwife and I would have spent a half hour commiserating.

"Oh, he was funny"

"I know, what a shame."

"He will be missed."

"Yes, yes, he will be missed…"

We'd go on like that forever. For your sake, I'll stop there. You get the idea. You don't need a complete transcript. If you do, mail me $5 and an SASE. I'll be sure to get a copy to you. In the meantime, let me continue with my blog.

We wouldn't chat up the dead because we were such great fans, but more because we always scoured the obits for "cool" dead people. Some people dig the wedding pages to throw divorce dirt. We stuck to the obits: we saw dead people.

Maybe we did it because you can never guess marriages:" They'll never make it," or "I think they got what it takes." We all play Ms. Cleo of the wedded bliss world, but we never get it right-- not even in our own marriages, for some of us.

I swear my crystal ball didn't show me sitting up for the divorce clock countdown. If it had showed that, even if I said, "I'd have still done it," I think I might have "done it" differently.

"No, honey, trust me. The plain sterling silver band says 'I love you'."

Yeah, I know. I am quite the catch--if you like soggy boots. Wuss in boots or not. I do remember the jeweler with diamond dust in her eyes. "You know, the size of the stone tells the world how much you love her." I was a sheep, cowed into selling the farm for a finger investment. I remember her holding out her finger in pride. I get a different finger whenever I see her now.

Alright, no I don't. It just sounds fun. I know she'd give me the finger if I asked, and that's really all that matters. In reality, she doesn't raise a hand either way. It's ok. I'm sure if she were Nostradamus Smurf, there were things she'd have done differently too. If I had to guess, it starts with the "jeans and T-shirt" ceremony, rather than the strangling dress and deadly shoes.

Why do we torture ourselves for the wedding? I mean, I'm a guy, I say that like I "torture myself." I may abuse myself, but there's not torture to it. The biggest torture for me was the chapped lips from the words "It'll be wonderful dear" passing across them every 30 seconds. I had no moisture to refresh them; I was a guy getting married for the first time.

Still, that's a guys wedding job: nod, smile, support. It's your day. We're just there as a cake topper. Don't get me wrong. I believe guys should be involved, but only where we're needed.

"I do."

The wedding is just like the marriage: how the couple works through the wedding day says a lot about how they'll work through the marriage. Is the groom distant? Is the wife overbearing and panicked? These are signs. It's not bad, it's just good to know.

Some guys love a wife who'll pick his clothes for him, and some women want the husband to agree with everything. In our wedding, and in our marriage, we were neither of these things. Still our partnership worked more like a friendship, and maybe that was our downfall. I don't know, I'm just tossing rice in the air to see where it lands. Maybe it really was the fact that everybody thought we would make it.

That's what they told us anyway.

That's why we used to go through the obits. See, weddings are tough. Unless we've managed to survive one, we have no business guessing who's going to last or not. Death, well everybody comes to that point someday. We usually hope later than sooner. Still, I think I can gauge that somebody will die, and be kind of accurate. After a divorce, finding that I'm right sometimes is what gets me through the day.