C'mon Get Happy!

So I've been kicked off the Partridge Family bus, who cares? I decided to c'mon-on-get-happy anyway. If that is the worst thing that happens to me this year, I have hit the existential lottery.

Either we'll all find a way to move on from this or we'll all carry a grudge to the grave, or some form of both. Grudge, schmudge. I am in Human Resources, for God's sake. I am a practiced don't-care-if-you-hate-me kind of gal. HR people who manage not to get eaten alive are not thin skinned and don't have wimpy self esteems. We have long ago stopped dreaming of being voted to the Homecoming Court by the masses. We form our relationships one at a time...never a big fan base. So some 25 year old half-wit figuratively thumbed her nose at me and mine. So what? The reviews won't kill me.

What galls me, really, is how distracting and looming and oppressive all this wedding nonsense has become for something that just a few months ago used to just painlessly ricochet off the surface of my brain. In the whole Partridge Family scheme of things, this wedding had been no more important than Tracy standing there dinging her triangle in the back in her knee socks. Part of the picture, but maybe only one line of script. Now, it's as if Miss Tracy has run up front, shoved Keith and his shag haircut off the stage and is trilling "I woke up in love this morning!"

And we're not supposed to be dying for the show to end?

Worse...Em's let-'em-eat-cake proclamations to her handpicked collection of serfs were limitless and unforgiving. There was an edict that J.'s tween get pink matchy-matchy braces on her teeth so they'd not clash with the bridal accouterments. (I am sure Em thinks she showed generous restraint by not demanding the placement of braces be delayed until after the wedding. It was probably her Lenten sacrifice not to insist.) There was the "only a trim" regulation so that everyone could be successfully whipped and teased and backcombed into the designated up-do. And my personal favorite, the warning that no one dare gain a pound. (Coming from a former chubbins, this was rich. And clearly Chuck had missed the memo - his rolling acreage taking on the size and shape of the Louisiana Purchase) The expectation of full compliance with the assignment of tasks at every family gathering - at this celebration we'll fold programs, at that event, we'll curl favor ribbons. It was clear everyone was in service to the Queen.

But Em's fiefdom did not extend to me. I had already told J. that I would not risk a discussion, much less an argument, about the Big Debacle within earshot of the kids. And since I had little trust that it would not magically materialize in the midst of regular dinner table drivel, I would need to make myself scarce. I would not be present to bear witness to Em blowing out the candles for the last time time as an O'Malley (Aaawwwww!) and I would be hopping down to bunny trail in another direction on Easter Sunday.

And if we never build a bridge or fill this chasm, life will go on, not as we knew it, but as we'd come to understand it. The Partridges sang it best:

We had a dream, we'd go travelin' together,
We'd spread a little lovin' then we'd keep movin' on.
Somethin' always happens whenever we're together
We get a happy feelin' when we're singing a song.
Trav'lin' along there's a song that we're singing, C'mon get happy!