Need moral support to have a wedding? Better stay single

I don’t like weddings. Too many people, too much noise and too much “trying too hard”. I would rather just stay home and talk to walls and cobwebs.

A guy I met through an old friend, six and a half years ago, is getting married. Me and this guy, we are not friends. I am not even sure me and the old friend who introduced us, are still friends. You know, you meet someone in school, you become friends and then school ends and years pass and you and this friend don’t talk anymore… are you still friends just because you like each other’s Facebook updates?

So this guy my old friend introduced me to, I had even forgotten his name. Anyway, I get on WhatsApp and see that I have been added to a group called “Syria weds Jamaica.” Only thing I hate more than a wedding is being added to a WhatsApp group. At least in weddings, there is food and if a very good wedding, alcohol. What am I going to eat in a WhatsApp group? Memes? So I “left”.

Then he calls me out of the blue, his voice larger than my forehead, “Hey dude!” he says. “It’s me! Jamaica! How have you been brother?”

Brother? Wait, who is Jamaica? Oooooh, JAMAICA!

“Oh man! How long has it been? 10 years?” I ask, even though I know it hasn’t been 10 years.

“Six and a half.” He corrects. “Guess what; I’m getting married!”

“Oh! Congratulations!” I wish I wasn’t feigning the excitement in my voice. But one of these days, they are going to create an Academy Award for Best Voice Actor on Phone Conversations and I’m going to win it every time. For king and country! Wait. For President and country? That doesn’t sound half as catchy.

“Anyway, I added you to my WhatsApp Group and when I saw you’ve left, well, I felt my heart go all fffsssshhhhh!” Yeah, I have no idea what that means. But considering I visited the participants list on my way out of the group and noticed there were 247 names on it, I really have no idea why his heart would… do that thing.

“I’m useless at all matters big-wedding.” That was the honest truth and my heart gave a leap. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so truthful with a stranger. I’ve joined the cult that sacrifices honesty at the altar of “being nice.”

“No, I don’t need you to do anything bro,” I wish he would stop calling me brother, or any variation thereof. I barely remember his face. “I just needed you there for moral support.”

“Moral support? Dude, you are getting married, not a heart transplant.” Realising that I might have stretched this whole ‘honesty’ thing a little too far, I made a more sensitive comeback. “I mean, you are getting married, bro, so you don’t need moral support from a guy like me, do you?”

What I meant to say was, if you need moral support to get married, then you probably have no business getting married in the first place. You need moral support for exams, and extreme sports, like sword fighting and playing hot potato on a minefield. You don’t even need moral support for a boxing match.

Ugly cry

He chuckled sadly bringing to mind my daughter Evelyn who chuckles like that sometimes. She is a year old now and whenever she makes that sad sound, she follows it up with a blackmailing face twist and next thing I know, there are tears in the game. I cannot handle tears, so I quickly told him, “Alright, just add me back, but don’t expect me to do too much. I might weigh in on discussion and maybe share the occasional meme, but other than that, I will follow silently and drop a ‘congratulations’ every now and then, cool?”

“Oh, thank you!” Oh boy. “Thank you so much!”

Revisiting this conversation in my head, I realise I might have been a bit harsh. I might have even come off as a hating tool, but he lost me at “moral support”. I didn’t even know what to say after that. Congratulations, or good luck?

And I know this quote doesn’t probably relate to everything I have just said above, but my Facebook guru, one Jay Shetty mentioned once that “We invest so much time and energy and resources in weddings, instead of marriages.” But what do I do know? I’m just a cab driver who got married at the Attorney General’s Office.