June 3 2001
CYBERCOLUMN:
Wedding in a time warp
___By Brett Younger
___The usher asks Carol, my wife, "Bride or groom?" Our 12-year-old begins giving me a speech on the goofiness of the question. I explain that I agree that "Bride or groom?" is a goofy question, but that it is probably not fair to blame it on the usher, who seems like a pleasant young man who is uncomfortable wearing rented clothes.
___My son has spent the last 30 minutes with a finger at his throat whining, "I’m choking." He’s wearing one of my old white dress shirts that is at least an inch too large for his neck. Men all over the sanctuary who spend 40 or 50 hours a week with less than an inch of free space around their necks would be happy to explain to him what "I’m choking" really means.
Brett Younger
___Graham is less than a half-inch shorter than I am, so my dress shirts, ties and socks now frequently disappear from my closet and dresser. He seems to enjoy petty larceny, and I feel a peculiar sense of pride in having two pairs of my socks present at formal gatherings.
___My son is thrown when the vows precede the rings.
___"What happened to the rings?" he whispers loudly. I point to the program to reassure him that the minister hasn’t forgotten. I wonder if he always has such little confidence in ministers. He slouches back into the pew and starts reading the program, resigned to boredom and 30 more minutes of life-threatening choking. I put my arm around him, careful to keep my arm on the back of the pew so as not to send him into a preteen affectionate-father-induced embarrassment.
___My son, according to my sarcastic father, is "surprisingly" handsome (we’re all glad that he looks like his mother), but his hair never looks like it was just combed and his glasses only look clean when I clean them. He has a hint of a mustache and more than a hint of what he’ll look like when he wears rented clothes someday.
___There is a girl across the way that looks 9 to 14—I can never tell any more—who is studying the program as though there might be a surprise ending. She is wearing a spring dress that the bridesmaids would no doubt rather be wearing than the no-color-to-be-found-in-nature taffeta never-to-be-worn-again dresses that they have obviously been forced at gunpoint to wear.
___It seems likely that 10 or 15 years from now Graham will stand with someone else’s daughter, a girl who now is wearing a spring dress and has only the hint of a bride about her. In a decade, he could be kissing his mother and me goodbye and starting a family of his own with a woman who was only recently just like him, a seventh grader.
___I’m glad he has 10 or 15 years to get ready. It feels like I only have five minutes.
___Brett Younger is pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth.
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