As I grow nearer and nearer to completing the now daunting list of invitees for the Mister (most perfect man ever...he's calling churches!), I realize I'm in some need of addresses. Ever the resourceful one, I start to Google friends and family names first. This results in a barage of interesting facts, ages, and random Facebook quotes I'm sure I'm better off not seeing. (Dear Stalkernet....)
What would grandmother do? After all, a wedding is a traditional thing that has taken many modern twists and turns. I know if it weren't for one of my bridesmaids, a Southern belle at her finest, I wouldn't know a lot of about what does into planning a wedding. I thought Chantilly Lace was a stripper name until that first day in the gown shop. (Okay, that's a little extreme, but seriously, I was up a girdle without a net, specifically a French lace net.) Mom further educated me on the etiquitte of the rehearsal dinner. Needless to say, my bull-in-a-china-shop approach had been all wrong, though well intended.
Finally on the traditional track in terms of wedding planning, I hit an obstacle: addresses. And that's when I thought to myself...what would grandmother do? After all, this wedding stuff is a traditional affair. Grandma would have had all of her friends and family's addresses in a little book by the phone in a nook next to the kitchen. I had people's addresses via a Google search. Epic fail, modern times, epic fail.
So, okay, we're pretty resourceful, but we're ghastly tacky and flagrantly uninformed. I definitely don't know the crux of my closest friends' personal information (which would be tragic in an accident. Ex: What if I got a text from one of my besties that said: Amy, help, someone's breaking into my home...I don't have much time, and I don't want them to hear me...call 911. ... ... ... I'd be up a creek --and so would they, without a paddle. Trust me, Grandma will win this round). One heck of an aside later, I find myself wondering how to get this information so I can send lovely, printed cards on cardstock to friends and family inviting them to The Mister's and my blissful matrimonial union as opposed to e-cards.
As I shake off the invisible shudder that just rippled through my torso at the thought of sending an e-card, I am haunted by the knowledge I did something equally as tacky (okay, maybe a little less?): I asked everyone's address via Facebook e-mail. Oh, Lord. It feels like hot pink vinyl on the corner of Bourbon and Hospital to even write it. But what else was I supposed to do? Send a text? Continue Googling into people's personal lives trying to find something as simple as an address (that's right, friends, I can know what you did on a Saturday night and what you had to say about it, but I can't know your a-d-d-r-e-s-s. What the donkey?)? The point is, in this modern day and age, I was left with little recourse. Sure, I could have placed a phone call, but do you people really want me calling? Wasting your minutes? Catching you up on how wedding planning is going?
In writing the last few sarcastic sentences, I've hit a dilemma. Conversation and reading are both simultaneously becoming a lost art form for this country, and most likely, planet at large (did you know that while those in other nations talk differently from Americans, our textual language, like sign language, is essentially universal?). So, while discouraging physical conversation via the phone (which I'm sure in its hay-day was criticized for ruining the random stop next door or trot to the neighbors porch or hanging out in front of ol' Al's General Store...not sure which), my invitational style does hopefuly encourage reading? Okay, I know I'm biting there.
So, I'm a tacky by-product of my Internet-loving generation. We communicate with our fingers and our innermost thoughts. A scary thing. I can barely speak sometimes let alone write with a pen. So, I'm pretty sure we've lost something --conversation, class, the ability to answer a question without consulting Google, but at the same time, we've gained efficiency, right?
I don't think the trade was worth it, but I hope no one minds my surrender to convenience. At least just this once.
No comments:
Post a Comment