An Emotion Not Experienced by All

Weddings aren't something guys understand. Sure we have the capability of understanding what the significance of the union between and a man and a woman is, but the 'wedding' as our society has defined it, eludes even the best intentioned of us guys.


Josh Taylor is a good friend of mine. He and his new wife, Whitney, were just married this past Friday evening back in Houston. It was a beautiful wedding, albeit hot and muggy. I think that weddings between the months of April and October in the state of Texas should be required to take place indoors. Sure outdoor weddings are great; trees, grass, a nice breeze, and sunshine make your special day a wonderful photo-op, except for all of the sweat and bugs that often come along with those great pictures.


I have a confession to make. I worry about what clothes I'm going to wear to events like weddings. Strange I know. As a guy I'm not supposed to really take much of an interest in the clothing that covers my nude figure (too graphic?). If you knew me back in high school you'd see how suprising this actually is for me. Back then I saw clothes as nothing more than a way to cover myself, fashion and appearence didn't enter my mind in a very significant way.


Clothing has become a budding obsession of mine. I think part of it is Jared's fault, he is at least responsible for 50% of the blame. He buys GQ magazine and has it sitting around our house on the coffee table most of the time. Jared is partly to blame, but so is my figure that is just now becoming more used to the clothes that mainstream American clothing companies manufacture.


I was shopping with my mom and sister this past weekend and, when a shirt I tried on didn't fit over my shoulders, I came out and announced, "My shoulders are just too big." My mom came back with a real gem though, she didn't even miss a beat, "No Andrew, the clothes were just made too small." This took me a second, for the first time I think this was actually the truth. I wasn't this freak in the mall any more. I wasn't the customer that sales reps spoke with just to shoot the breeze. They actually had the chance of making a sale when I was in the store. Searching feeverishly through the racks for size XXL-XXXL wasn't something I had to do any longer.


This was really an exciting feeling. I had to go somewhere, I had to try something on that had never fit before. Banana Republic, the holy grail of clothing at most mid-level malls. I needed a pair of khakis didn't I? "Something for the weddings this summer," I chanted in my head on the way past the food court, and around the maze of middle-eastern-styled carts dotting the pathways of Willowbrook Mall. And there they were, size 38 bootcut khakis. Let me tell you, they fit like a glove. They weren't tight. They didn't require a hefty breath in to button the top, and zip the fly.


And like guys can't really understand a wedding in the way that most girls understand them, skinny people aren't capeable of understanding fitting into a pair of pants for the first time. It's magical. Like Christmas morning, and your first kiss rolled up into one magnificent moment.


So for all of you skinny people out there (as if there are many people at all out there reading my blog), put on 25 pounds and go to the mall. Try on something that you really want and make sure that it just won't fit (if you need some meal ideas to put on weight just ask, I've got plenty of suggestions). Then, work your butt off and lose that weight just so that you can go and buy that pair of pants that you really wanted back when you were too large. It's a feeling that you can't understand until you've experienced it.

It's an emotion not experienced by all.