Baggage…

My wife and I were in a store the other day and spent way too much money. The store was a stand-alone boutique operated by one of the world’s best-known manufacturers of luxury handbags and other leather goods, and they were having what passes for a sale when your merchandise is grossly overpriced to begin with. But the stuff looks good and wears well, so there we were, shopping our brains out. And in the spirit of full disclosure, two of the many items that we purchased were for me. These two were NOT handbags.

One of the items that my wife selected was a beautiful and large travel bag. When we travel by air we like to go with carry-on luggage only, so each of us takes a rolling bag that fits in the overhead, and a second bag to go under the seat. A BIG second bag. Mine is from Nike, and costs fifteen dollars. It’s fine. My wife has one, coincidentally, from the same maker that operates the aforementioned boutique, and she loves it. It costs a whole lot more than fifteen dollars. It carries everything, it’s well organized, it’s durable. But we found another one that she liked…very much. Even on sale, it was expensive. She needed it not at all, but she really liked it. She said that she wasn’t going to buy it, but I suggested that she decide about it while standing on line to pay for her other purchases.

Since the “sale” was a pretty good one (considering that this brand is almost never marked down) the line was rather long. She asked me to put the travel bag back on the shelf, since she didn’t really “need” it. I asked her if she liked it, and she said that she liked it a lot. I insisted she take it for that reason and that reason alone. I believe that my exact words were “if you like it then you should have it.” I am ALWAYS trying to convince my wife to “treat herself.” It’s not easy. She is the least acquisitive person that I have ever met, and (despite my feeble attempts at humor) to hear her string together the two words “I want” is a rare occurrence indeed. She was only in the handbag store in the first place because I wanted her to be.

And then it happened.

Standing in the line in front of us was a very pretty young woman in her early twenties. She was all by herself, and was about to purchase one small item. She could not help but overhear our conversation about the travel bag. She turned around and looked at my wife. The girl flashed a very beautiful and very real smile, and said to my wife…”I want a husband just like him”…pointing to me. I was for the moment flattered, and my wife said something about how lucky she was to be married to me (poor delusional soul that she is). And that was that, at least for the two of them. For me…well…it got me to thinking about how people wind up with who they wind up with.

If you were to ask a cross section of unmarried American women if they’d like to marry a “Nice Guy” I would suggest to you that most of them would say yes. A “Nice Guy” is probably pretty difficult to define, but allow me to list a few possible criteria. I guess that a “Nice Guy” should be honest, generous, caring, affable, trustworthy, and decent. Now all of us have had, I imagine, times in our lives (or in my case MANY times in our lives) when we have fallen short in one or more of these criteria. So I’m talking here about “as a rule” rather than “100% of the time.”

Let’s say that you were to round up a ballpark full of unmarried “Nice Guys.” I would suggest using Camden Yards in Baltimore, since the Orioles aren’t using its 48,190 seats for much of anything productive this season. And if you were to ask those 48,190 “Nice Guys” what their single biggest social concern would be, I’d bet you an overpriced stadium hot dog that the answer would be “the inability to find a compatible mate.” So if the women say they want “Nice Guys” and the “Nice Guys” can’t find receptive women, where is the disconnect?

I think the answer might be that people give lip service to the kind of person that they think they ought to desire, but when it comes right down to it, those they REALLY want (on a much more visceral level) are very different. The woman who says she wants the “Nice Guy” often really craves the danger and the excitement of the “Bad Boy.” And let’s not forget about the guys who will trample over a roomful of decent women to get over there next to Ms. Trouble (Google Jesse James/Michelle McGee for additional information on this phenomenon). And how many times have you heard one of my…

TOP TEN EXPLANATIONS WHY YOU AND THAT LOSER ARE STILL TOGETHER?

1. I can change him/her. (If you want a project, build a model airplane!)

2. It’s not his/her fault. (Well y’know…it kinda is…)

3. He/she has a lot of good qualities. (If you have to say this, then the bad outweighs the good by several tons)

4. It’s the drugs/alcohol/stress/etc. (No…it’s WHY there ARE drugs, alcohol and stress)

5. Things will improve once we’re…married/living together/parents. (They won’t…they’ll get worse)

6. It’s his/her no-good friends. (Our friends are our friends for a reason)

7. It’s his/her no-good relatives. (You don’t get a Golden Delicious from a Crab Apple tree)

8. He/she is still trying to find himself/herself. (Check under that rock over there.)

9. Jesus will fix this if we pray hard enough. (Oh Puh-leeze !!!)

10. Money will solve things. (It has worked out so well for Larry King, now on wife #8)

If you are now or have ever been in a situation where you have had to make any of the above explanations, here is why: The fact of the matter is…we get the mates that we deserve, and, I guess, the mates that we really, deep down inside, want. That pretty young woman in the handbag store may think, after a momentary and superficial exposure, that she wants “a husband just like (me)” but when it comes down to it, does she really? The only thing she knew about me (other than my clean cut good looks) is that I encourage my wife to have the nice things that she could never have while growing up. That’s a pretty weak reason to choose a lifelong partner.

There are an awful lot of us out there, decent people looking to make a life with another decent person, and most of us are not nearly as lucky as I was. We’re all hoping to hit the relationship jackpot. And when we do, as I did, we want nothing more than to make it last forever. The notion that all men fear commitment is nonsense. Many years ago a girlfriend of nearly three years broke things off with me by telling me that I was unwilling to commit. I said to her “I’m not unwilling to commit…I’m unwilling to commit TO YOU.” I never saw her again, thank goodness.

This pairing-off process is difficult. You have to be patient and persistent and brave and strong. It may work out for you, or it may not. There are lots of obstacles to overcome…some that come from outside, and some that we generate within ourselves. But when it happens for you, it is so well worth all of the time, effort, risk and sacrifice. I really did get the mate that I wanted. My wife claims that she did too. I wonder if that pretty young woman standing in line at the handbag store, she of the bright smile and the snap judgment, will be as fortunate.

Many Happy Returns…

Next up in our series of money saving tips…the one household purchase that you can make that is guaranteed to not only pay for itself the first time you use it, but will continue to provide huge savings year after year. Go out and buy yourself a large size box of kitchen matches, and watch the big money start piling up. I suggest that you purchase “Diamond Strike Anywhere Kitchen Matches” in the economical 250 count box. 250 of these will save you a fortune! Don’t thank me…I’m here to help…it’s what I do.

Okay…so I haven’t actually done this yet, but I think that I’m going to. Here’s why.

My wife likes to shop. She likes it a lot. And I like to shop with her. Now I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t want to go all sexist on your ass here, so for the sake of full disclosure…I’m 100% guy. My idea of “getting in touch with my feminine side” involves glancing at the television briefly while walking (quickly) through the family room while my wife is watching Grey’s Anatomy (or, as I call it, Grey’s Monotony). But even though I am positively reeking with intense guy-ness, the very un-guy process of shopping is something that we like to do together. While shopping we encourage each other (“That looks GREAT on you…it makes you look nearly as good as you did way back, many, many years ago, before you started to…oops…I mean…that looks GREAT on you!”). We tell each other the truth (Yes, those jeans DO make your ass look big, and no wife wants her husband’s ass to look big.”). And we give each other reality checks (“Do I think $300.00 is too much for a handbag that you’ll use maybe twice? Is a bear Catholic?”). By the way…just in case you failed to notice, I’ve used the word “ass” three times, no, make that four times, so far in this one paragraph.

One other thing that we have in common regarding shopping is that neither of us like to try things on in the fitting rooms. There are numerous reasons for this. Have you been in a fitting room lately? The days of the locking door, the good lighting and the sparkling three way mirror are on the way out, I guess. Now, we are treated to ripped shower-curtain style enclosures and if the fitting room has a mirror at all, it’s filthy, and about the size of the one in your car. The lighting in your average fitting room can be either so dim that you can’t find your shoes when you’ve finished, or so harsh and bright that you develop a tan while changing. There are discarded straight pins everywhere on the floor, poised to attack, and when I remove my shoes to try on pants, one of them invariably finds its way into the softest part of my foot. And worst of all, taking everything off, putting something on, walking out to the front to show your spouse, walking back, putting something else on, and repeating the process…oh…three or four hundred times on a average shopping day can get a tad tedious. So we often purchase items that we THINK will be just fine without first trying them on, expecting to try them on at home, where the lighting is just right, the mirrors are clean and full length, and the floors are, for the most part, feral-straight-pin free.

When you try your items on at home, not everything fits, not everything coordinates with what you thought that it would, not everything looks as good on you as it did on the hanger (which explains why so many models, both male and female, are chosen for their uncanny resemblance to hangers) and some items…well…you just decide that you don’t want them after all. And this is where the Kitchen Matches come in handy: When you have purchased something and brought it home, and decided that you don’t want it after all, Here is a way to save yourself some SERIOUS money. Firmly grasp the item that you wish to return, and take it out into your back yard. Then go back into your house, get some old newspaper and your box of “Diamond Strike Anywhere Kitchen Matches” and go back outside. Crumple four sheets of newspaper for each item that you wish to return, put each “return” item on top of the four crumpled sheets, and light each pile on fire. This will save you a fortune in the long run.

The only other alternative is to return the item(s) to the store, and this is a VERY costly mistake to be avoided like the plague. Here’s why.

In this economic situation, everyone is cutting back, particularly retail stores. The way for the store to save the most is to have the minimum number of employees, and so, when you require some help from an actual human being, be prepared to wait. Here’s how it goes when we go back to a store to return something:

ME: “Wow…will you look at the line for returns. This may take a while.”

MY WIFE: (Already dazed and confused by the colorful handbag display near the return counter) “What?”

ME: “I SAID…Wow…will you look at the line for returns. This may take a while.”

MY WIFE: (Sadly looking off into the distance at the racks of clothes) “I’ll wait with you (LONG SIGH…).”

ME: (Trying to be the Good Husband) “No reason for both of us to stand here until Justin Bieber’s voice changes…why don’t you go look around, and I’ll find you when I’m done.”

MY WIFE: (Trying VERY HARD to conceal her delight) “Are you sure?”

ME: (As if I had not been down this road before) “Yes.”

And so off she goes, and I wait and wait and wait…until I’m able to get that $12.99 t-shirt back into the loving hands of the highly bored employee (who I’m certain is being punished for being REALLY, REALLY SLOW by being assigned to process the returns).

And so I’m now finally done, and, clutching my return receipt for the princely sum of $13.90, I set off to find You-Know-Who. And when I find her, she is pushing a shopping cart that resembles the colorful little clown car in the circus, only more tightly packed. By the time we’re done “discussing” the contents, we’ve carved the total cost of the “must-haves” all the way down into the low four figures. So we go and pay for these items. And the cycle begins anew. Had we not gone back to the store to return that $12.99 t-shirt, then this iteration of the Italian leather designer handbag, the six blouses, the four pairs of pants, the jeans, the shoes, shoes, shoes, and so on, would have never taken place, so please, take my advice, and, rather than return items to the store, take them out into your back yard and set them on fire. It’s a lot cheaper.

And you know that second batch of items I just told you about? I suspect that my wife put one item in that batch (another t-shirt, I think) that she has no intention of keeping. And I think I know what she’s up to. You wait here…I’m going to get my matches.

The $39.00 Chicken Salad…

Here’s some more evidence that I married the right woman.

If you’ve seen Toy Story 2 and enjoyed the music, particularly the “Woody’s Roundup” theme song, then you’ve heard a band called “Riders in the Sky.” I like these guys. They perform, in full cowboy regalia, the classic western style music of the thirties and the forties made popular by such heroes of my youth as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. The music is fun, and I wanted to see them in person. Although my wife claims to like them, I know (and she knows that I know) that she plays along with the joke just for my benefit. I found out that they were coming to Lake Wales, a town about four hours from my home, and I looked forward to going. It was an afternoon performance, so we could leave at a civilized hour, enjoy the show, have dinner, and take a leisurely drive back home. So we bought our tickets online, and everything was in place.

I didn’t tell my wife, but I had a plan. I knew that Lake Wales was the home of a legendary Florida restaurant named Chalet Suzanne. Their most famous dishes were their Lobster Newberg, and their signature appetizer, a broiled, caramelized Grapefruit served with Chicken Livers. Chalet Suzanne also had a reputation for being the most expensive restaurant in Florida (this was before the emergence of South Beach as the Mecca of wretched excess that it has become) with its very own FAA-approved airstrip, so that wealthy diners could fly in for dinner. Now I’m not all that fancy, and neither is my wife, but I thought that just once, as long as we were going to be in the neighborhood, she might like to be treated to dinner at such a place. It was going to be a surprise.

The concert was, as expected, great fun. We got to meet the performers after the show, and we really enjoyed walking around Lake Wales. It’s a beautiful place, with an old-fashioned downtown square. But the sun was going down, and it was time for dinner. After much searching (and after demonstrating several times that the old cliche about men not stopping to ask for directions is untrue), we came to Chalet Suzanne at the end of a dirt road featuring potholes the size of major appliances. It looked like a charming little Swiss village, if charming little Swiss villages were festooned with half-burned-out Christmas lights in May, and if charming little Swiss villages were in dire need of painting. But we didn’t spend two hours driving in circles for the visual impact…we were going to try the famous food. So we parked in the rutted gravel lot, and walked into the restaurant. The entry vestibule of the most expensive restaurant in Florida smelled of urine, which was even more incongruous when contrasted with the many framed awards on the walls. They had a menu on a small table near the receptionist station, and we thought we’d have a look before being seated.

My wife grew up in a series of small towns in central Florida. She “ate a lot of government cheese,” as she puts it. She is a wonderful woman…kind, loving, generous of spirit…and the nicest person I’ve ever encountered. She was just barely out of her teens when we met. One of the things that I’m most proud of is that I’ve managed to give her a pretty good life for more than twenty years. She has gotten used to the finer things in life without requiring them in order to be happy. A perfect balance. So as she read the menu, with the $95.00 (à la carte) 6 oz. filet mignon, the $10.00 (plain) baked potato, and so on, she began to question my sanity. I thought that I might make her feel better if I ordered the least expensive item on the menu. It turned out to be a scoop of chicken salad (à la carte again) at $39.00. This seemed to bother her more than the $15.83 per ounce steak. She looked at me with that “are you out of your f-ing mind” look that I suspect all husbands in good marriages see with some frequency, and out we walked, past the burned out Christmas lights, through the gravel, into the car…we drove around the potholes, and back onto the highway. At least one of us is sensible.

I’m a good money manager…I can easily afford an expensive dinner. But, as my wife pointed out, the fact that I can doesn’t mean that I should.

We ate at a Burger King in the parking lot of a strip shopping center near the entrance to the highway that would eventually take us to the turnpike. The Whoppers were delicious, and two for $3.00. The place didn’t smell of urine, and all of the light bulbs were lit. Best of all, I was there with the great love of my life, and the Whopper dinner served in paper wrapping on plastic trays was more romantic than Lobster Newberg, candlelight and strolling violins could have ever been. I got her one of those silly paper crowns that Burger King used to have available to give to children, and I made her wear it. She thought that I was kidding. I wasn’t. She looked so very beautiful. We took the money that we saved on dinner that night and went to see Riders in the Sky again the next year…and still had enough left over for pizza after the show.

I think of that trip to Lake Wales often, both for what didn’t happen, and for what did.

I looked at the Chalet Suzanne menu online a few days ago, and noticed that the prices have gone down a bit lately, perhaps because of the overall financial condition of the nation. It’s still a really expensive place though. In addition to lowering the prices, I hope that they’ve also fixed the lights, painted the place, and gotten rid of the urine smell, but I’m not going back to find out. As for our eventual dinner choice I was reminded once again that evening that when you’re really in love, and when she is too, a hamburger under fluorescent lights is a celebratory feast. And that $39.00 scoop of chicken salad? It seems to be not so much a meal as it is perhaps an ineffectual treatment for a sad and all-too-prevalent disease…a disease characterized by a big, dark, empty space in the center of the heart…a disease from which, thank goodness, neither my wife nor I suffer.

What Love Smells Like…

My father spent the last years of his too-short life as an importer. He made a really good living at it. But I think more than the income it provided, my father liked being an importer because it allowed him, along with my mother, and often me, to travel all over the world. We went everywhere together. We crossed the Atlantic twice, first class, on the ocean liner S.S. United States. We marveled at the noise in the Pachinko parlors off the Ginza in Tokyo. We flew on Pan American Flight 002, which went from New York to New York, around the world heading east. A traveler on this flight could get off and get on anywhere along the route, stay as long as he wished, and pick up the next available seat(s) to the next destination. These were wonderful experiences for an inquisitive kid like me. One of our favorite stops was Paris. On several occasions I was able to wander the Louvre, stroll along the Seine, and visit the Eiffel Tower. And of course, Parisian food and Parisian shopping were even more renowned in the those days than they are today.

My parents’ favorite shop in Paris was Sagil. It’s still there, at 242 Rue de Rivoli, in the same block as Angelina, home of the world’s best hot chocolate. My father used to love to take my mother shopping at Sagil, with its designer handbags, luxury accessories, and, best of all, a huge selection of the finest French perfumes. I liked to go with them, because Sagil employed a saleslady that even as a kid I found alluring. Her name was Odile. She was very petite and very beautiful, with porcelain skin and the longest eyelashes I had ever seen. But what really interested me was her hair. If you’ve ever seen the film of Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday to President John Kennedy…well…that was Odile’s hairstyle…except, unlike Marilyn’s hair, Odile’s was pink. The color was exactly that of cotton candy. I had always liked cotton candy. No one in those years had pink hair…except Odile…and I was smitten.

My mother loved perfume, as did most women of that era, and my father loved buying it for her. The perfumes smelled good, but more than that, the perfumes reminded them of their trips together, and the perfumes reminded my mother of my father. I can remember them choosing the various scents…some scents which were not even exported to the United States. My mother had four favorites…”Oh La La”, “Mitsouko”, “Shocking” and the one she liked best of all, “Mistigri.” My mother and my father had happy times shopping at Sagil. When my father died, he had only been in the import business for about ten years. The trips ended, the business was sold, and my life and my mother’s life continued, albeit incomplete without my father. And my mother continued to apply small amounts of those perfumes each day, not because she was going out, but, as she explained to me, they reminded her of my father. She never so much as looked at another man.

After a while, the perfumes were used up. My mother took the empty bottles and put them in her dresser drawers, so that the faint scent remaining in the bottles would infuse her clothes. Even that eventually stopped working. Nearly forty years had gone by. One day I saw her remove the “Mistigri” bottle from the drawer and put her nose to it. She commented (with some sadness) that it no longer had the fragrance, but I noticed that she put it back in the drawer anyway. This clearly was not about the scent. It was about my father, their travels, and their love for one another. My mother (who was by then in her late eighties) had a birthday coming up, and I had a plan.

By this time I was a regular user of ebay, the online auction site. I had sold hundreds of items, and found that I could buy things on ebay that I could not find anywhere else. I began to search ebay for those very same perfumes, and, much to my surprise, I was able to find them…brand new, sealed bottles, in their original boxes…perfumes that hadn’t been produced in decades, and some of them had never even been sold in the United States. But there they were…and I bought them. You might think that these were rare items and therefore were very costly, but to my great surprise, they cost me less than they had cost my father forty years earlier. And so…they began to arrive. An “Oh La La” gift set from the early sixties, with its bottles and sprays all of classic mid-century design. A small bottle of “Shocking” by Schiaparelli, with its famous “shocking pink” label. A beautiful round bottle of “Mitsouko”…a fine crystal flask in miniature, with its ground glass stopper and its golden cord. The birthday was drawing near, but still, no “Mistigri”, my mother’s very favorite, and the one that, more than any other, reminded her of my father.

With about two weeks to go, I finally found a listing for “Mistigri”, in, of all places, St. Augustine, right here in my home state of Florida. It was hard to believe the listing. The seller stated that the bottle contained an unheard of 1 1/2 ounces of perfume…not cologne…not toilet water…perfume. The seller claimed that the bottle was sealed, in its original satin-lined wooden box, which was in turn encased in its own original paper outer box. This didn’t seem possible, considering that “Mistigri” hadn’t been produced since 1968. I didn’t care how much it would cost…I had to have it…so I bid a lot of money. Fortunately, no one else wanted it very much. I won the auction for about the price of a good quality dress shirt…much less than my high bid. It arrived just as advertised…it was perfect. I had all four of the perfumes I wanted to find, with about a week to spare.

In my family, we’ve never been much on special occasion gifting. My wife and I have given up on it all together. But this was different. This wasn’t about gifts…this wasn’t about “stuff.” This was about traveling though time. I wanted to give my now-elderly mother the gift of her past, the gift of a better time, the gift of a few more happy memories of my father. When she unwrapped the package and realized what it contained, her eyes lit up like they hadn’t in many years. And so it was…she was back in Paris, and young, and healthy, and back at Sagil with my father, if only in her mind, and if only for a little while.

Neuro-scientists tell us that of all of the senses, smell is the one that persists longest in memory.

My mother didn’t live long enough to use up those perfumes. She loved them, and in her last years she loved telling the story of how she got them. After she died, I gave away most of her things, as she wanted me to do. But I still have those partially used perfumes. They’re stashed away in the back of a closet. They remind me, as they did my mother, of the past, of a better time, of my father. And now that she’s no longer here…they remind me of her. When I’m gone, I hope that my wife will sell them on ebay. Even though they’re now slightly used, someone will be as excited to find them as I was, and someone will be as happy to receive them as my mother was. I can’t possibly be the only one with a story like this to tell…and a loving quest like this to complete.

My Top Ten Valentine’s Day Gift Giving Tips…

Of the many ways in which my great good fortune manifests itself, all pale in comparison to my being married to the love of my life. We have been together for many years. Early in our relationship I received a tearful, sobbing telephone call from her. She had gone shopping at a local mall with her best friend, and she was calling out of frustration, not having been able to find the perfect Birthday/Christmas/Valentine’s Day/Anniversary/Hanukkah/Arbor Day/Kwanzaa/Whatever (who remembers these things) gift for me. NOTHING is worth making my wife cry. At that point we agreed to STOP BUYING EACH OTHER GIFTS. Things are not the barometer of how we feel about each other. We have all that we want, and if we need a little something, we go get it together, with no special occasion necessary. To us, a perfect holiday involves being together, in good health, on the couch in the family room, with the phone disconnected. That’s it.

Now…that having been said…I realize that most folks are still going the GIFTING route. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (as they used to say on “Seinfeld”). So I’m here to help, with my Top Ten Valentine’s Day Gift Giving Tips…

1. If you intend to write an original love poem, three words to avoid are MUCOUS, CHAFING, and NANTUCKET.

2. One Dozen Long Stemmed Red Roses…Yes
Stolen Funeral Arrangement…NO

3. No matter what it says on the sign in the store, WALMART sells underwear, NOT lingerie.

4. Box Wine… OK
Box Champagne…not so much

5. If you are a man purchasing clothing for a woman as a Valentine’s Day gift, ALWAYS know the correct size, and then
purchase AT LEAST two sizes smaller. She needs to believe that you think she’s still a size six.

6. Make certain that you remove the WALGREEN’S sticker from the heart shaped box of candy.

7. Hot Chocolate Dipped Strawberries…Yummy
Hot Chocolate Dipped Body Parts…Painful

8. The fact that you can purchase Edible Panties does not mean that all panties are edible. Please do not ask how I found this out.

9. There is no such thing as a SWIFFER Gift Set.

10. Valentine’s Day cards should never be addressed “Occupant” or “To Whom It May Concern.”

Now that I’ve helped you with a few gift ideas, I have some additional suggestions. Tell your Valentine that you love her (or him). Tell her every day. Several times. Many times. Mean it. Every time. Things don’t really matter. We all have too many things anyway. Life is short. Your time together is shorter still. Make the most of it. There is not enough jewelry or chocolate or champagne in the world to compensate for one minute of lost time.

The Princess Brides…

From our “Disturbing Trends that Bode Ill for the Future” desk (we have one of those ???) comes this alert.

Starting in just a few more years, men, who have had a hard enough time in the past and in the present making women happy (I know this to be true because I am married to an actual woman) will have even one more roadblock to contend with on that already slippery and nearly impassable highway. I am referring here to the Disney Princess Phenomenon, or, as we guys like to call it, the DPP.

What is the DPP you may ask (no…really…you may ask…go ahead…ask now)? Thank you. I’m glad that you asked. The DPP movement began innocently enough many years ago, with the formulaic Disney movies for kids, wherein the Princess (Belle, Ariel, Jasmine, Snow White, Mulan…oh my God…I am SO EMBARRASSED that I knew all of these without having to look them up), after many trials and tribulations, wins the love of the handsome prince, and (all together now…) THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER. Now it stands to reason that little girls, seeing these happy endings, would want to be princesses themselves, and a few years ago, the fine folks at Disney started to sell princess costumes for Halloween. Since they loved children so much, they sold these costumes for no profit (of course I’m kidding about that “no profit” thing, and if you believed that, welcome to Fantasyland…) at Disney stores in malls everywhere and by mail. Actually, they must have made a mint off of them. They were a hit…so some genius in Marketing decided that, if little girls enjoyed being princesses at Halloween, why not year ’round? So the costumes became available all of the time.

I started seeing little girls in princess costumes at Walt Disney World here in Florida a few years ago. Even toddlers were getting into the act. I confess…these kids were adorable…no question about it. But they were adorable only because they looked like normal little kids in princess costumes. And then someone else in Marketing noticed that the Disney Company did not yet have all of the money on the planet, and that needed to be corrected…so they came up with another plan to get their hands on what was left. The Bippity Boppity Boutique…a beauty salon for children at Disney World. It’s named after the song sung by the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella (again…SO embarrassed that I did not have to look this up) when she converts shabby and unhappy Cinderella into a beautiful princess.

The Bippity Boppity Boutique is conveniently located inside Cinderella’s Castle (there is a second location elsewhere in Walt Disney World). It’s “where little girls are magically transformed into little princesses” (a direct quote from the website). The “Coach Package” includes hairstyling and “shimmering makeup.” It’s about fifty dollars. For another five dollars you can get the “Crown Package” which includes the “Coach Package” plus nails. For parents who feel REALLY guilty about missing that last soccer game or ballet recital or school Thanksgiving pageant, there’s the “Castle Package” which includes hair, nails, makeup, photos, costume, and accessories, and STARTS at (let me repeat that…STARTS at) $189.95 plus tax.

In order that the little boy in the family not feel left out, the Bippity Boppity Boutique offers the “Cool Dudes Package.” For $7.50 plus tax, little boys get “colorful hair gel and confetti.” Memo to parents: If you plan on getting junior the “Cool Dudes Package” please make sure you do it early enough in your vacation so that the “colorful hair gel and confetti” are totally gone by the time he returns to school. Otherwise, he will get his Cool Dude ass kicked, and the nicknames that he receives as a result of this (by the way…I can personally guarantee that “Cool Dude” will NOT be one of those nicknames) will stay with him until long after he begins collecting Social Security.

Now why, again you may ask, is this a problem. Well for one thing, the little girls look…well…as they used to say in polite company… “tarted up.” The cute kids in the dresses “just like Belle” (or Cinderella, or Snow White…well…you get the idea) are made up and coiffed to look like even younger versions of Jodi Foster in “Taxi Driver.” But they seem happy, and the parents seem happy, so no one gets hurt…right? Wrong! In a few years these little girls will be young women…dating and falling in love. This partnering process is really hard on young people (as I recall, having been a young person myself, albeit many years ago), both male and female, without the additional pressures brought about on the young man by the young woman who grew up under the spell of the DPP, and now expects her young swain to be the Handsome Prince, and to sweep her off to a perfect castle where they will live blissfully forever, as doves, merrily chirping (by the way…doves don’t chirp) carry a banner overhead which reads, “The End.” It doesn’t work that way.

Real marriages, both good ones and not-so-good ones, have real challenges by which princesses and handsome princes are never besieged. The difference between the good marriages and the not-so-good marriages isn’t the presence or the absence of such challenges, but how the couples confront them. An entire generation of men is about to find out what pressure REALLY is…thanks to the Disney Princess Phenomenon and its attendant expectations of perfection in all things and at all times. I missed this by a generation or two, thank goodness. Although, truth be told, my wife has been my beautiful princess since the day that we met, and, poor deluded soul that she is, she swears that I’m her handsome prince. Next time we go to Orlando, I wonder if she’d prefer the “Crown Package” or the “Castle Package” ???

The Best Man…

The best man at my wedding was one of my former students.  We met when I was the new advisor to the honor society, and he was a new inductee attending his first meeting. He was unremarkable in appearance, short, with his scruffy beard, jeans, t-shirt, and NFL cap. The group was, at that point in time, a bit stagnant. About fifteen new members attended the meeting. He stood up to suggest we organize a trip to a Dolphins game, and I noticed something interesting. When he spoke, everyone paid rapt attention to him, even me. I had been an educator by then for nearly fifteen years, and in situations like this, I generally was doing in my head what has become known of late as multi-tasking…part listening, part going over the contents of my next lecture, and part thinking about what I was going to have for dinner. Not this time. Something about this ordinary-looking teenager, in this ordinary situation, was extraordinary.

After the meeting, I suggested that he come back to my office. I guess that he thought he was in some kind of trouble. We talked for a while, and he told me that he had dropped out of high school, flipped burgers at Wendy’s for a couple of years, gotten a G.E.D., and decided to give college a try. It turns out that he was good at it. Really good. Good enough to be invited to join the honor society after just one semester. I told him that I wanted the honor society at my college to develop into something meaningful…to provide the most beneficial experiences for the most able and deserving students, and I told him that I needed his help to accomplish that goal. He liked the idea, and we became friends that very day.

The national convention of this large and prestigious organization was soon to commence in Washington, D.C. I asked the college to send four of us…myself, the chapter president, the chapter vice-president, and my new friend. And away we went. None of us had attended the convention prior to this one. The president and the vice-president went to party, my new friend and I went to learn. We did. One of the features of these conventions, like countless similar annual meetings, is the election of national officers. In this organization, these elections seemed to be a real highlight, and the participants in the election seemed to really have a lot of fun. And so I said to my friend…”kid…I think you can do this…but you have to commit the next year to it.” He agreed, and we started planning on the plane ride back home. Soon after arriving home, he was elected Chapter President, rebuilt the chapter, and we took nearly fifty members to the next year’s convention, where he was elected National President on the first ballot.

He had a terrific year as National President. The organization sent him all over the country to speak and attend events. The college showcased him as an example of the life-changing opportunities available on its campuses. And through it all, he remained humble and friendly and funny and accessible. Most importantly, the friendship continued to grow.

His year as National President was coming to an end. During his travels he had met a beautiful, smart, charming young woman, and they had developed a wonderful relationship. He told me that he intended to marry her, and that even though the wedding was years away (they both needed to finish school) I would be his best man. I was honored. He received a full scholarship to a university near her, and off he went. We stayed in touch, and saw each other when he came home to visit his family. He graduated from the university, and won a full scholarship to a fine law school…many hundreds of miles from his beloved. He couldn’t take the separation, dropped out, temporarily he assured me, and moved back to be near her. He supported himself by selling vacuum cleaners, used cars…all without much success. Finally, he moved back home, hoping to get back on track, while still maintaining his relationship. He went to work with another long-time friend, cleaning fast food outlets very late into the night. The irony of this fast food full circle occurred to me, but I never mentioned it to him.

By then I had met the woman who is now my wife, and we had been living together for awhile. And my friend and I had struck a deal. He was going to be my best man, and I was going to be his. My fiance and I were getting up one morning to, coincidentally, attend a wedding…one of my cousins…when the phone call arrived. I was standing there in my home, waiting for my fiance to get ready, at about nine in the morning, wearing a tuxedo, when a mutual friend called to tell me that there had been an accident. On the way to clean a Burger King at 3:30 in the morning, my friend’s car was struck broadside by a police cruiser, speeding without either lights or siren. When we got to the hospital there wasn’t a mark on him except for the bandage on his head…his head had struck the doorpost of the car, and he was in a coma.

He wasn’t supposed to live…but he did. He wasn’t supposed to come out of the coma, but, several months later…he did. But he was changed forever. His speech was impaired, his vision was impaired, His dexterity was impaired, his short-term memory was impaired, he suffered from seizures, and he couldn’t walk. But he was alive, and after some serious time in physical therapy, he came home. And he tried and tried and tried to walk…practiced every day…until eventually, with the help of a walker, he could get around just a bit. I couldn’t understand why, with all of the deficits, this little bit of walking was so important to him.

He never did get married.

Through it all, he never complained, never bemoaned the tragedy that had befallen him, and never cursed the cards that he had been dealt. And he continued to struggle…to do that walking that seemed so important to him. In ancient Greece, it was believed that the seat of courage was in the heart. Clearly…although my friend’s head was damaged by the accident, his heart remained unscathed.

And so, my wedding day arrived, and accident or no accident, deficits or no deficits…a promise is a promise, for him and for me. He was my best man. Using his walker, and with the help of his father, he walked down the aisle, up onto the platform, and handed me the ring for my bride. I was later told by one of his family members that all the months and months of trying to learn to walk all over again had been for one reason…so that he could walk down the aisle and do his duty at my wedding. He pretty much stopped walking after that. He and his family moved a bit farther away not long after, and I don’t see him very much anymore, but not a day goes by that I don’t think of him…he really was the best man at my wedding…in every possible meaning of the term.