Vows not seen in the NYT

The only way to read the Sunday NYT is to dart right for the Sunday Styles section. Otherwise you are dead inside or you are illiterate, or possibly both. Maybe you take a quick scan of whether or not you know anyone in the "Vows" pages. (I never do.)(I was born in the Midwest.)(I think these parenthetical facts are related.) Maybe you snicker at the brazen journalist who capped off the profile on one couple-to-be-wed, "The groom's previous two marriages ended in divorce." What would the hashtag for that one be? #bestwishes #threesacharm These little profiles are always so unapologetically namedroppy and vomitus. Yet they are also a rare celebration of union, against the wails of the thousands who have lost loved ones in the Phillippines this week, against the din of celebrity break-ups of the hour.

But what if they told the real story, gave us the real scoop. Here's how ours would read:

Kendra Stanton, the daughter of a redheaded mother and a silver-haired father, was married on Sunday to John Lee, the son of Mija and Jae. None of the parents have amassed great fortunes due to their Ivy league educations, though if filing taxes on time made one a rock star, these people would be a bunch of Mick Jaggers. In fairness, Kendra's father is a lawyer but prefers to reference his glory days working the steampress at Schoolbells school uniform suppliers, when he was 18.

Ms. Stanton, 24, is a serial jobhopper who is not living up to her potential and is accruing credit card debt rapidly, probably because she keeps reinvesting her profits from her part-time retail job into her wardrobe since her full-time job working with at-risk youth is making her depressed about the state of humanity. It's better than eating her feelings, because, hello, wedding dress fitting in two days! She graduated magna cum laude from a small liberal arts college on a hill that is highly obscure. She no longer remembers her major. Her parents are no longer married. They have never taken her to Europe. She doesn't know it yet but she will not be taken off the waitlist at her top law school, so she won't go after all.

Mr. Lee, 26, is an anomaly: a male, Canadian-born Korean social worker who likes fashion, frisbee and football and loves Jesus. He might actually be the only one. Like, on earth. He earned his MSW from a college that happens to be all-women for undergraduate, which was not as much of a problem as one would imagine. In his own undergraduate years, he was not the most stunning student. He did swim all four years and has the wristwatch to prove it. His parents own a dental lab, which is a useful thing for a variety of reasons, particularly for making free mouthguards for future daughters-in-law who develop TMJ for unknown reasons.

5 Magnificent Mistakes I made in my Twenties #definingdecade

My students are all reading The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Nowmostly because it is an assigned text for a psych course, but also because maybe the twenties are the new Freakonomics, the new Malcolm Gladwell, the new Rachael Ray all wrapped up in bacon and birthday cake. I don't know. The twenties are trending, though, am I right? I haven't read The Defining Decade and I'm probably missing out on a TED talk that summarizes it, but something tells me it won't be groundbreaking for me. Because I spend much of my day with people on the fringes or well entrenched in their twenties. Because I have experienced the twenties, the whole decade of them, and I've lived to tell about them, which makes me an expert, obviiiiousssslyyyyy.

If Dr. Meg Jay is right and the decisions made and relationships forged in the twenties are clutch and will dictate the failures and successes of the future, then let us ponder the magnificent mistakes by yours truly in her twenties?

1. I made the magnificent mistake of having good health insurance.

Oh yeah. That non-profit I worked at right out of college? It took away my soul and good nature but boy was that health insurance top rate. So good, in fact, that when I did the responsible thing of going to the dentist, they took one look at my loaded dental plan and prescribed me 11 fillings for the cavities I didn't have. They were just the beginnings of cavities, so future dentists have told me. Nevermind that I'd never had a cavity before. Nevermind that I didn't know what it was to "get a second opinion." I always wanted to know what having my skull drilled was like....

2. I married my college sweetheart.

And because we never broke up prior to getting married, I never had a chance to figure out if I was just psychotic *with him* or if it was just a part of my general charms and abilities that would emerge in any romantic relationship.

3. I believed all the nice things people said about me in college.

I had emerged from undergraduate actually buying that I had unique skills that companies would be falling over themselves to bring aboard to finally, finally complete their puzzle and achieve sustainable success, if only for my winning and unmatched copyediting abilities! Then I entered a world of Working People at Real Jobs that sort of frowned upon the notion of a siesta. I forgot that life wasn't grading on the A-F scale, but rather the Hired-or-Fired scale. I somehow missed the memo that I still had crazy copious volumes to learn about maturity and comporting self and doing a solid job.

4. I cried on my 26th birthday because it seemed too old to not have started my family yet.

Because who does that?

5. I spent six months studying to be a financial advisor and an insurance salesperson.

I failed. Really magnificently, I failed. I learned tons about self sabotage and blocking out every reasonable voice that tells you gently that maybe they saw you more doing something in the humanities? I threw away hundreds if not thousands of dollars and felt worthless and directionless and angry. And because of my spiritual and emotional poverty, I was able to hear the voice of God more clearly, calling me home. Which is why I'm so grateful for the twenties. The defining decade. The very definition of how faith broke down the doors to my heart and set me sailing on a sea of redemption. The magnificently mistaken twenties. Thank you, Lord, for them. Amen.

What the Ohio State Marching Band is teaching me about obedience

I trust you, too, have sat in front of TV screen or computer monitor, or best case scnario, high above the 50 yard line at the Horseshow Stadium and watched with mouth agape as the Ohio State Marching Band has reinvented the half-time show. I mean...what on astroturf? What on artificial grass is happening down there? Because from where I sit, it ain't your pro-forma conga line of tubas playing their cheeks off to "Hang on Sloopy."

Last week it was Michael Jackson moonwalking.

This week it was Superman, Harry Potter taking flight and a freaking T-Rex going all prehistoric predator on some poor bando.

Total insanity under a chin-strapped hat is what that is.

And I could go on about all the other great things to come out of Ohio, like Thomas Edison and Mead notebooks and the word "treelawn." But I am thinking today less as a native Ohioan and more as a journalist. How are they doing that? How are they doing things that only the Chinese can do at the Olympics opening games? Is it a computer software that figures this out? And why is this hokey art form suddenly elevated, like the Cirque du Soleil of marching bands?

Does anybody care? Because everyone from the Today Show to the L.A. Times is just sort of standing aghast at this performance art on a football field. Like, Oh hey, did you see this? Because if not, here's the Youtube. We're going to take a break from asking questions and just stand awestruck for a minute and wonder what is going to come out of Columbus, Ohio next week.

There is plenty of room in this world for real spectacle, for technical marvels that require such precision, such calculation it's unfathomable.

As someone with a penchant for spontaneity, though, these art forms, these technical marvels are so beyond my realm of comprehension. I can barely make it to work on time 5 days a week IN A ROW. I cannot think about making sure I am standing at the right 45 degree angle in a stiff polyester uniform while holding up my trombone just so and piping out the appointed note in alignment with a whole fleet of people doing the same.

This is what is most marvelous to me about the Ohio State marching band: they can't see what we see. The musicians know their marching orders, and that is all. The artists don't hear what we hear, they don't see what we see. They don't see the canvas as they are painting it. They only know that if they follow these directions, and they trust that if everybody else does, their formation will astound. All the while, they are keeping the beat, marching in place, now moving this way, now making a scatter plot of people to obscure the formation and now, BOOM, is that Clark Kent changing in a phone booth? Un.Be.Liev.Able.

So goes the call to obedience. We don't know at any moment why we are given certain orders. We don't know why we are told to move clear across the field. We don't understand why it appears everyone else is moving forward and we are the ones just looking the fool, tooting our flute to the beat, marching in one place. We can't see the big picture, we can't step out of our lives and see this whole band marching in one accord.

Rare are the moments when we feel we are apart of something larger than ourselves. Even rarer are the moments when we hear the whoops and cheers from the stands, OMG THIS IS CRAY CRAY! But those moments somehow make following those marching orders, all those rehearsals, all that sweat equity so so worth it. Am I right?