COLUMN: Spring time equals ring time for some students
According our trusty Gregorian calendar and most commercials endlessly pushing clearance sales at Kmart, it is springtime.
However, if I could keep a secret with my general reading public, that isn’t what I call it.
I mean, in this given geographical location of youth, general personal purity and freelance social interaction the world over, this time of year needs a name that supports an underlying theme for the events and emotions most common.
So, springtime? No. It’s ring time.
I have no documented support to substantiate my claim that some demonic bystander has been spiking the water system with corny Jimmy Stewart movies, but I have engaged in enough public couples observation to feel pretty confident that some sort of something has infested our air, waters, dentist waiting rooms and all else, resulting in all kinds of people and pets suddenly feeling comfortable enough with commitment to pure, unadulterated matrimony until death or Jimmy Fallon do them part.
In short, people are getting engaged and they are doing it in droves. Ring time, in all of its mass and terror, is upon us.
This brings drastic change to a great amount of how the public functions around campus, but not nearly as steeply anywhere as the change it makes in the ever-hallowed pre-professor-starting-class-chat time. This is an immensely pivotal time for students to create enough of a bond so they can dutifully survive class time together – and by dutifully survive, of course, I mean find the ability to openly groan about a group project in the matching key.
However, recently the hollowed few minutes has become a water cooler session of kneeling stories, various style plans and hours upon hours of female emotional whimpering. I call it the “Human Pinterest Board,” a cavalcade of suggestions and my-aunt-did-that-at-her-wedding-and-it-was-so-cutes to make any episode “Dawson’s Creek” blush.
Take last week. There the 24-27 students – depending on whether or not it was quiz day – sit awaiting our professor to zip in and endow upon us the gift of knowledge, when there sits future wife number one, slumped down and clicking furiously through vibrant first-point perspective photographs of table cloths, each click adding another wrinkle to her forehead.
Evidently, it turns out the natural motion of marriage is that the emotional strain of finding a mate, courting them, building an impenetrable bond and committing their life for all of eternity and deciding what fabric will dawn the underlings of the edible arrangements is exactly the same even though the duration of time for each event is very different.
Cue in future wife two, who, by rule, is significantly closer to the day of rice-tossing as future wife one, and begins the given interaction with some variation of the following phrase:
“Oh goodness, cloths are the worst.”
They then commence into talking about the quality state of tablecloths in relation other required plans. As it stands right now, they are the worst. They make this known in several words.
When then commence to the first word-of-mouth suggestion, which generally stems from some designs some person saw at some event that was easily made from some fabric for some incredible price. She doesn’t quite remember the details but she does remember it being “gorgeous” and “had some baby blue in it.”
This spawns the Google phase, in which both future wives machete through bookmarked pages and search engines to find some sort of variant of said cloth in hopes, dreams and aspiration that finally, in this cold cruel world full of fabric sample loneliness, perhaps, maybe, possibly, by some whim of the heart, she has found the one.
Future wife one has struggles finding it at first, but that won’t slow her down, is motivated by her drive for the perfect ceremony and future wife two’s constant affirmations of “keep looking, I promise it’s so cute.”
Then finally, like a serpent in the brush, there it is. And goodness is it there, right in her face and even deeper in her heart. She’d cry if she didn’t need to get focused momentarily on comparative politics.
As the professor walks up to the Power Point, both future wives can tell the end of their window of opportunity is nigh. She skims through the preparation instructions checking just before emailing such a beacon of love and splendor to her future spouse, only to find the worst. She drops her head, lets her lip quiver and looks over to future wife and mouths “I can’t sew.”
Silence.
But have no fear. Future wife two conjures a solution, leans toward future wife one and assures her that in time of crafty doubt one can always, with faith ingenuity, use a hot glue gun. Future wifeys rejoice, for eureka, the blessed tablecloth has been found.
A successful outing for our future wives, only leaving us with the longing cliffhanger of what ever they shall do to select the right napkin assortments. I’ll guess we’ll just have to wait and find out in two to five days.
– Steve Schwartzman is a senior in communication studies and linguistics. When he isn’t trying too hard to make people laugh he is usually watching sports, watching 90’s cartoons or experiencing all things Aggie Life. Got a good idea for Steve to rant about? Hit him up at steve.schwartzman@aggiemail.usu.edu or on Twitter @SchwartZteve