Three Things You Don't Know About Sean
Aug. 31st, 2006 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotnik2004A few days have gone by, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sneech515 / dilyshaner wedding last weekend. The weather didn't entirely cooperate, but thunderheads and sheets of rain were no match for Sean & Dilys' 40,000 watts of goofy cheer. Highlights included:
My speech has a title. It’s called “Three Things You Don’t Know About Sean,” and then there’s an asterisk, and the asterisk says, “and I’ll work in some stuff about Dilys at the end.”
We’re all here because we know and love Sean or Dilys. But we all know them in different ways and different capacities. Some of us are old friends, some of us are relatives, some of us are co-workers. (Actually, you guys didn’t invite any co-workers, did you?) This is something I love about weddings. Normally we only get to see one side of the people we know. People compartmentalize their lives. They act differently around their friends, their relatives, their co-workers. Well, maybe not Dilys. I’m pretty sure she is always like she is. But regular people compartmentalize. They act differently around the different people in their life. And it’s only at something like a wedding, where you get to see the people you love interacting with all the other people they love, that you catch a glimpse of all the other facets of their personality. So in order to help you do this, here are three things you might not know about Sean. And I’ll work in some stuff about Dilys at the end.
Part 1. Something Dilys Doesn’t Know About Sean.
Well, there isn’t much Dilys doesn’t know about Sean. She knows that before she came into his life – like a comet – Sean had a very loyal, tight-knit group of friends. Some might even say we were xenophobic. Paranoid. Frightened of outsiders. Certainly, we were all very protective of our friend Sean.
What you don’t know, Dilys, is why we were so protective of Sean. The reason is: Sean was and is the social glue that holds our whole group of friends together. Without him, we would fly apart. That might be hard to believe, when you’re trying to get Sean out of bed to go to brunch on a Sunday before 3 in the afternoon. But it’s true. We’d be lost without him. Because ninety percent of the time, when any of us get together, what we talk about is… The Simpsons. But when we aren’t talking about the Simpsons… (or Star Wars, or Star Trek, or Battlestar Galactica, or WKRP in Cincinnati…), then, ninety percent of the time, what we talk about is: repeating funny things that Sean has said, or funny stories about things that Sean has done. If he didn’t exist, we’d probably just sit and stare at each other in total silence. Because I don’t know what we would have to talk about.
Part 2. Something Sean’s Parents Don’t Know About Sean.
I’m not going to lie to you: I had a lot of choices for this one. Unfortunately, Sean and Dilys made us submit all of our speeches ahead of time, so the best bits got taken out. But you know, there may be fewer things that Rick and Julie don’t know about Sean than Sean thinks there are. Parents are pretty crafty, and they’re usually more clever than their kids give them credit for. (Or maybe that’s just what I want to believe, now that I’ve become a parent myself.)
Still, this is something I don’t think Rick and Julie know about Sean: he is the most devoted, loving, doting son you will ever ever meet. That might be hard to believe, if you’re thinking of how often Sean calls home, or how often he comes for dinner. But when Sean is with his friends, when he is away from you, Rick and Julie, there is nothing he would rather talk about than his terrific parents. What you’ve been up to, when he saw you last. I’m serious. He talks about you all the time. I probably know more funny, affectionate, off-color stories about Rick and Julie Davidson – OK, mostly about Rick – than I do about my own parents. For years, Sean’s been threatening to write a memoir entitled, “Jobs My Dad Has Had, and Things He’s Set On Fire.” It would not be a short book, but it would be a best seller. I know he doesn’t like to let on when you’re around, but Sean is crazy about you guys. He’s so proud of you, and he loves you so much.
Part 3. Something I Didn’t Know About Sean.
As Chris was saying, Sean and Chris and I have been friends for more than twenty years. It was twenty years ago this month that Chris came over to my house and said, “We’re going into grade 10 this September. If we want to be popular this year, we have to stop sitting with Sean in the cafeteria.” Well we didn’t, and things worked out OK.
But when you’re fourteen, and a little nerdy and shy, you pick your friends based on what stuff they like, rather than what they are like, as people. Sean and I read the same fantasy novels, the same comic books, we played Dungeons & Dragons and computer games – that was the foundation of our friendship. And as Sean was saying last night, even as our friendship got deeper, those games and comics and stories were still the medium through which our interaction was filtered. When I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, there was nothing I wanted more, craved more, or valued more than Sean’s approval. But my only way of demonstrating that was the hours I spent devising diabolical death-traps for his D&D characters, or the Boston Crème donuts we’d leave in odd places in the middle of the night. We never hugged as teenagers, we never made any physical contact, except when we wrestled. I don’t know what Dr. Freud would make of that, but we did a lot of wrestling. And even as the years went on, for a long time, our primary way of acknowledging how much we valued our friendship and each other was in the obsessive remembering and repeating of all our anecdotes and secret language and inside jokes.
If that had never changed, our friendship would still be one for the books. But it did change, about six or seven years ago, when Sean met this wild amazing crazy shiny girl named Dilys. He calls her his superhero, and she is. (I met a pretty amazing girl around that time, too, and that helped too.)
And right around that time, our friendship started changing, for the better. We started talking without putting ironic quotation marks around everything. We admitted, finally, how much respect and admiration we had for one another. We even started hugging, without attaching noogies or a piledriver at the end. I always knew Sean was smart, and cool, and funny as hell. What I didn’t know about Sean, for an embarrassingly long time, is how honest and bighearted and generous and wonderful he is. It is one of the great surprises and gifts of my adult life that somehow, through no cleverness of my own, I stumbled out of teenage awkwardness into this deep, solid, meaningful friendship, one that truly sustains me wherever I go.
And Dilys, I give you full credit. Because the timing was no coincidence. We all know you make Sean happy. You give him permission to open up, I think. You give him permission to be vulnerable, and silly, and warm. It’s a great gift you have given him, and it’s a great gift you’ve given me, and I thank you.
I’m so honored to be here, and I’m so happy for you both. And if the rest of you can stand to take another drink, please raise your glasses for yet another toast to the bride and groom.
Yeah, that's two killer "is it getting dusty in here?" wedding speeches I've linked to. I'm available for bar mitzvahs, telethons, and corporate functions.
Congratulations, guys. Thanks for a beautiful party.
sneech515 / dilyshaner wedding last weekend. The weather didn't entirely cooperate, but thunderheads and sheets of rain were no match for Sean & Dilys' 40,000 watts of goofy cheer. Highlights included: - Customized vows so romantic they made the minister cry. Boo-ya, that's like thirty extra wedding points.
- Giving all the guests clown noses and making them wear them.
- Sean's surprise musical number. I've known him for 20 years, I think that's the first time I've ever seen him sing.
- Yuki's debut on the social scene, at least among that circle of friends. She was a superstar, cooing and charming everyone from start to finish.
- Hammered bridesmaids! (Technically, I'm thinking of one bridesmaid and one female usher. But they were a lot of fun.)
- Ahem... my speech, of course: (Gammafodder's was great, too.)
My speech has a title. It’s called “Three Things You Don’t Know About Sean,” and then there’s an asterisk, and the asterisk says, “and I’ll work in some stuff about Dilys at the end.”
We’re all here because we know and love Sean or Dilys. But we all know them in different ways and different capacities. Some of us are old friends, some of us are relatives, some of us are co-workers. (Actually, you guys didn’t invite any co-workers, did you?) This is something I love about weddings. Normally we only get to see one side of the people we know. People compartmentalize their lives. They act differently around their friends, their relatives, their co-workers. Well, maybe not Dilys. I’m pretty sure she is always like she is. But regular people compartmentalize. They act differently around the different people in their life. And it’s only at something like a wedding, where you get to see the people you love interacting with all the other people they love, that you catch a glimpse of all the other facets of their personality. So in order to help you do this, here are three things you might not know about Sean. And I’ll work in some stuff about Dilys at the end.
Part 1. Something Dilys Doesn’t Know About Sean.
Well, there isn’t much Dilys doesn’t know about Sean. She knows that before she came into his life – like a comet – Sean had a very loyal, tight-knit group of friends. Some might even say we were xenophobic. Paranoid. Frightened of outsiders. Certainly, we were all very protective of our friend Sean.
What you don’t know, Dilys, is why we were so protective of Sean. The reason is: Sean was and is the social glue that holds our whole group of friends together. Without him, we would fly apart. That might be hard to believe, when you’re trying to get Sean out of bed to go to brunch on a Sunday before 3 in the afternoon. But it’s true. We’d be lost without him. Because ninety percent of the time, when any of us get together, what we talk about is… The Simpsons. But when we aren’t talking about the Simpsons… (or Star Wars, or Star Trek, or Battlestar Galactica, or WKRP in Cincinnati…), then, ninety percent of the time, what we talk about is: repeating funny things that Sean has said, or funny stories about things that Sean has done. If he didn’t exist, we’d probably just sit and stare at each other in total silence. Because I don’t know what we would have to talk about.
Part 2. Something Sean’s Parents Don’t Know About Sean.
I’m not going to lie to you: I had a lot of choices for this one. Unfortunately, Sean and Dilys made us submit all of our speeches ahead of time, so the best bits got taken out. But you know, there may be fewer things that Rick and Julie don’t know about Sean than Sean thinks there are. Parents are pretty crafty, and they’re usually more clever than their kids give them credit for. (Or maybe that’s just what I want to believe, now that I’ve become a parent myself.)
Still, this is something I don’t think Rick and Julie know about Sean: he is the most devoted, loving, doting son you will ever ever meet. That might be hard to believe, if you’re thinking of how often Sean calls home, or how often he comes for dinner. But when Sean is with his friends, when he is away from you, Rick and Julie, there is nothing he would rather talk about than his terrific parents. What you’ve been up to, when he saw you last. I’m serious. He talks about you all the time. I probably know more funny, affectionate, off-color stories about Rick and Julie Davidson – OK, mostly about Rick – than I do about my own parents. For years, Sean’s been threatening to write a memoir entitled, “Jobs My Dad Has Had, and Things He’s Set On Fire.” It would not be a short book, but it would be a best seller. I know he doesn’t like to let on when you’re around, but Sean is crazy about you guys. He’s so proud of you, and he loves you so much.
Part 3. Something I Didn’t Know About Sean.
As Chris was saying, Sean and Chris and I have been friends for more than twenty years. It was twenty years ago this month that Chris came over to my house and said, “We’re going into grade 10 this September. If we want to be popular this year, we have to stop sitting with Sean in the cafeteria.” Well we didn’t, and things worked out OK.
But when you’re fourteen, and a little nerdy and shy, you pick your friends based on what stuff they like, rather than what they are like, as people. Sean and I read the same fantasy novels, the same comic books, we played Dungeons & Dragons and computer games – that was the foundation of our friendship. And as Sean was saying last night, even as our friendship got deeper, those games and comics and stories were still the medium through which our interaction was filtered. When I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, there was nothing I wanted more, craved more, or valued more than Sean’s approval. But my only way of demonstrating that was the hours I spent devising diabolical death-traps for his D&D characters, or the Boston Crème donuts we’d leave in odd places in the middle of the night. We never hugged as teenagers, we never made any physical contact, except when we wrestled. I don’t know what Dr. Freud would make of that, but we did a lot of wrestling. And even as the years went on, for a long time, our primary way of acknowledging how much we valued our friendship and each other was in the obsessive remembering and repeating of all our anecdotes and secret language and inside jokes.
If that had never changed, our friendship would still be one for the books. But it did change, about six or seven years ago, when Sean met this wild amazing crazy shiny girl named Dilys. He calls her his superhero, and she is. (I met a pretty amazing girl around that time, too, and that helped too.)
And right around that time, our friendship started changing, for the better. We started talking without putting ironic quotation marks around everything. We admitted, finally, how much respect and admiration we had for one another. We even started hugging, without attaching noogies or a piledriver at the end. I always knew Sean was smart, and cool, and funny as hell. What I didn’t know about Sean, for an embarrassingly long time, is how honest and bighearted and generous and wonderful he is. It is one of the great surprises and gifts of my adult life that somehow, through no cleverness of my own, I stumbled out of teenage awkwardness into this deep, solid, meaningful friendship, one that truly sustains me wherever I go.
And Dilys, I give you full credit. Because the timing was no coincidence. We all know you make Sean happy. You give him permission to open up, I think. You give him permission to be vulnerable, and silly, and warm. It’s a great gift you have given him, and it’s a great gift you’ve given me, and I thank you.
I’m so honored to be here, and I’m so happy for you both. And if the rest of you can stand to take another drink, please raise your glasses for yet another toast to the bride and groom.
Yeah, that's two killer "is it getting dusty in here?" wedding speeches I've linked to. I'm available for bar mitzvahs, telethons, and corporate functions.
Congratulations, guys. Thanks for a beautiful party.
