Glaige Victorious

“Why Echardt, you ought to think about the future.”
“…You’re an A-1 nut boy and Grissom knows it!”

This time last year, if you would have told me that within the next twelve months the Boston Red Sox would be World Series Champs and my all-time bro D$ would be married, I’d have told you that you were of your nut a mile and a half. But last October the Sox won the Series and last Friday my bro tied the not.

“What’s that?”
“It’s the insurance damage waiver for your beautiful new car.
Will you need collision coverage?”
“Yes.”
“Fire?”
“Probably.”
“Personal Injury?”
“I hope not, but accidents do happen.”
“They frequently do with you.”
“Is there any other protection I need?”
“Only from me 007, unless you bring that car back in pristine order.”

Dustin and Kiley are both from the Portland area, which is only a three hour drive from home, so I flew into Seattle and met up with Mom and Dad, who just met me at the airport, gave me a car and sent me on my way. It felt like a secret agent hand-off, all that was missing was a briefcase with a hand-cuff attachment and rocket launchers installed behind the headlights.

“If it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go.”
“Don’t worry, more people die in cars than on planes.”

I had stayed up late the night before packing for the trip, and I woke up early that morning for a regular day at work. I worked through lunch so I could leave work an hour early in a rush to make my flight, which meant that besides the airline peanuts, I hadn’t eaten since 7:30 am. My plane got in at about 9 pm (but that was pacific time, so as far as my mountain-time stomach was concerned, it was 10 pm). A drive-through meal from Wendy’s kept me awake for the first 30 minutes of my drive, but once that was gone I had nothing to break up the monotony accept for the occasional prayer asking for angelic visitations to keep me awake.

“What’ll it be Emmit, the usual?”
“No, I’m gonna need something much stronger than that tonight.”
“Sarsaparilla?”

I rolled in just before midnight. Under any normal circumstances I would have hit the hay then and there, but this was my bro’s last night as a single man. We didn’t exactly do the traditional bachelor party thing, but we DID do the traditional Heath and Dustin thing: delicious snacks, a good movie, and dash conversation.

“Young [man], this is your last night in the nursery,
and that’s my final word on the matter!”

We ate chips and salsa, chugged bottles of Thomas Kemper root beer (a Northwest original), and watched Peter Pan. It was the perfect end to a perfect bachelorhood. Peter Pan epitomizes so much of who Dustin and I have been and every time we watch it (together or separately) it spawns conversation.

“So, your adventures are over.”
“Oh no! To live… to live would be an awfully big adventure.”

We only got about 20 minutes into the movie before conversation took over. We talked about how even though he’s getting married and moving on, it’s not the end of our adventures. I think too many people (single people, mostly) think that once you’re married, you stop being who you were when you were single, you stop doing the things you did when you were single, and you stop seeing the friends you saw when you were single. Now, that may be true for life after kids (we’ll see what happens when that sort of thing comes about)…

“This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.
But this time it happened in [Portland].”

…but we realized that night (as we’ve done about a hundred times before) that the reason Sir D of Narrow and the Twelve Twenty are so close, isn’t out of convenience, in fact, over the past year, we’ve become closer DESPITE the increasing inconveniences of distance and lifestyle, but because we relate to each other so well. And as the events of that weekend unfolded, I could tell that that closeness didn’t change. I wasn’t the one getting married, but D$ and I are so much the same that as I watched him put up with taking pictures and greeting people in the reception line and stuff, I could tell how sincerely fulfilled he was and I couldn’t help but feel it too.

But not everything that weekend unfolded as planned. Friday morning was kind of chaotic as everyone was getting ready for the 11am ceremony. I knew that everyone had to be there early, so I waited to be the last one to get in the shower. By the time I got out of the shower, everyone was gone. Dustin’s brother had given me some simple directions on how to get to the temple, so I was sure I could make it. Dustin’s sister said it was a ten minute drive, so I left 15 minutes early.

“I thought you said Marcus had a head start...”
“Are you kidding? You know I made that up:
Marcus got lost once in his own museum.”

No matter how short a drive, or how simple a route, I have an uncanny ability to get lost. Dustin’s brother Spencer says that if he had a mutant power, it’d be a quick ‘alt-tab’ finger (to switch from window to window on a computer screen), well, my mutant power would be getting lost. I followed the directions exactly: “just head to I-5, head north and get off on the Lake Oswego exit.” I did just that, only I got onto I-5 north of the Lake Oswego exit, so I keep looking and looking and just kept going farther and farther north.

As soon as I spotted the river that forms the state line I realized I’d gone to far. I turned around and tried to race back. By this time I had five minutes to get there, but traffic was so thick that I couldn’t go much faster than 40 mph. Finally I found the Lake Oswego exit, and it wasn’t until I found my self on the WRONG side of the Lake that I realized it wasn’t the exit I was supposed to take. I called my Mom to see if she could get directions on line, but that just made me more frustrated, so I got off the phone with her. By this time I was 15 minutes late, 20 miles up the wrong road, and so emotional with frustration that I was cursing words that ought to have disqualified me from entering the temple even if I ever DID find it.

Well, I finally found it at about 11:30. I guess they waited and waited for me, and finally gave up and started it only seconds before I got there. I could just imagine how frustrating it must have been for Dustin and Kiley—you wait all your life to get married and then when you’re finally ready, something happens to force you to wait a little longer. The same kind of thing happened to me after my mission: after two years and an hour and a half flight, we couldn’t touch down at Sea-Tac Airport because of fog so we just circled for an hour or so—I was so ready to be home that I contemplated just grabbing a parachute and jumping for it.

“Hmm, got lost once in his own museum, huh?”
“Uh huh.”

A Mormon wedding only lasts about 45 seconds, but they take those 45 seconds VERY seriously, so they had the doors locked when I got there, then as soon as the sealing was complete they opened the doors again and I tip-toed in and took the empty seat. I half expected the sort of elation as if Elias were to finally show up and take his reserved seat at a Jewish family’s Passover feast, but everyone seemed pretty calm—in fact, nobody seemed too surprised that I’d gotten lost or been late or any of that stuff—almost like they half expected it of me. But there was a collective sigh of relief from everyone (they were probably just glad to see that I didn’t die in a car accident).

I was so emotional at the thought of missing my bro’s wedding, and so ashamed for having forced them to wait that I couldn’t even look at Dustin. After a Mormon 45 second wedding, the bride and groom stand by the door and are congratulated by all in attendance as everyone leaves the room. I was one of the last to leave. I came to Kiley first. My eyes were kind of puffy and all my shaky voice could muster was a sheepish, “...Sorry I’m late.”

When I got to Dustin I couldn’t even speak. This is the guy who I’ve always counted on to be there with me through all the worst of the worst dating experiences. This is the guy who I could talk to about why dating was stressing me out because he was always going through the same thing I was going through. This was the guy who understood and shared my concern that maybe I’d set my standards too high and that the kind of girl I’ve been looking for didn’t exist. And now he’d found a girl who proved that all our stubborn clinging to those high standards weren’t just a bit of sillyness.

“Old… Alone… Done for!”

That wedding, that moment, that man hug was the culminating event of all the sh#t Dustin and I have been through together and I was pretty overwhelmed by it all. Maybe what overwhelmed me was the idea that HE’D found a girl and proven HIS commitment to HIS expectations, but that I was still alone and unfulfilled.

Maybe it was just to lighten things up, and maybe it was because he could sense my worry… but after a burley man hug, the kind which is only had and understood between the truest of bros at the most significant of times, Dustin put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I want you to take care of Neverland when I’m gone, even the Neverbugs.” I laughed and held up my fingers to show just how small Neverbugs could be and finished the quote saying, “Little ones.” Those were the only two words I said to my best friend at his wedding.

The cool thing about how Dustin and Kiley did things was that they didn’t just run off to the nearest Super 8 Motel so they could consummate their marriage as soon as humanly possible. They came back to Dustin’s Parents’ place and just hung out with family and friends the rest of the day until the reception that night. So, even though “little ones” was the only thing I said at D Narrow’s wedding, it wasn’t the only thing I said on his wedding day. We had a lot of time to just hang out and talk, the same way we always have done… the same way we always will.

“You think its over because of the [new family] that I have.
It’s not over. This isn’t a story. This isn’t the end.”

After the reception that night, as I watched my old friend drive away with his new wife, I realized that even though our lives and our circumstances may change, that somethings never will, like who we are… and the friends who were there with us during the tough times in life that made us who we are. And even thought I know I can’t rely on Dustin to always be going through the same dating woes I experience any more, I know I can look at him and his marriage and see it as proof that there’s no need for doubt; what I’m looking for is out there, and the Glaziers’ victory is the proof.