Six or seven years ago, I went to the wedding of a billiard buddy/co-worker who married his high school sweetheart. He was a mellow, funny webmaster with a penchant for South Park and she was a tightly-wound medical school student who could be coaxed into a state of uneasy relaxation after a few beers and a few games of pool, if she was shooting well. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, but she came from money, and the wedding was a grand, elaborate affair in the swank Omni Parker House, replete with relatives and parental friends from all over the world, a four-course meal, a popular local surf-rock band, and a post-party in the private room of our favorite pool hall. It was the nicest wedding I’ve ever been to (if “nice” means expensive and not necessarily “attended by likable people” or “no one looked at me like I was a crasher.”)
They were registered at Bloomingdales, of course. A week beforehand I logged into the online gift registry and gifted them with a set of pewter candlestick holders, cringing a bit when I purchased them. Still, it was either the candlestick holders or a single Wedgwood place setting, and I didn’t want to look stingy.
Soon after the wedding, I got an email from Bloomingdales saying that the candlesticks were on backorder and would be delivered to the couple when they were available. I played pool with the couple and some co-workers about three times a month, and I mentioned how the candlesticks were on backorder. They seemed nonchalant about it, like you would expect an early-20s couple to be about pewter candlestick holders.
Life went on. Whenever I saw the couple, I was reminded about the pewter candlestick holders. I imagined the resentment they felt towards me, a good friend who made a decent living, who went to their ornate wedding celebration and had not yet conjured a present. I called Bloomingdales months later. The candlesticks were still on backorder for an indeterminant number of weeks. I could get a refund, but everything else on the registry was bought. “Does the couple at least know that the candlesticks are coming? Do they know thay I bought them a present?” The customer service rep pled ignorance.
I apologized several times to the couple. “If I had known they were being forged by elves in some distant enchanted forest, I wouldn’t have ordered them,” I joked to mask my paranoia about how much my lack of gift has offended them.
They thought I was obsessed with the candlestick holders. And I was: They were my friends, they had a first-class shindig, and I owed them was a gift. Finally, more than 14 months after the wedding, my friend informed me that the pewter candlestick holders had been delivered the previous week. “Do you like them?” I asked anxiously. “Yeah, sure, they’re great,” he said, with a snarky tone to his voice, like whopee, candlestick holders.
Then he said something that I never totally believed until I recently got married. “Of course we thank you for the candlesticks, but we’re more thankful that you were at our wedding. We can buy our own candlesticks. We can’t buy a loyal pool buddy who can’t shot straight to save her life but can bankshot like a fiend.”
