Wedding Announcements Can Ruin a Perfectly Nice Sunday

Do you want to feel really bad about yourself, and not only yourself but your kids? Read the bridal announcements in the Sunday New York Times and you'll have self loathing. Every week it makes me crazy, who are these people?

 Reading about the brides, grooms, and their parents could send me to therapy or a bar.  Each bride or groom has: saved the lives of hundreds of homeless people by the age of 20, climbed Mt. Everest more than once, earned a Ph.d in English and Microbiology, created a software program during their senior year at an Ivy League school and sold it for $50 million, lived in a tent in the Sub Sahara tending to drought victims or is "on track" to be the youngest Senator in U.S. history. Who are these kids?

It gets worse. The parents of these wunderkind are weapons of ego destruction. Both Mother and Father alike have: cured some form of Cancer, discovered a new gene therapy that will eradicate all diseases that start with the letter "M", produced seven Oscar winning movies, run the campaigns of three Presidents , written a Pulitzer prize winning novel which was turned into a film that grossed $300 million, helped get Nelson Mandela released from prison, or know Oprah. I have weekly self loathing and throw the bridal section in the garbage without bothering to re-cycle. I'm frantic, need medication and definitely more education.

 I have one grown son so have to prepare my list of accomplishments soon. I've wracked my brain as to what I could proclaim in the paper. So far I've come up with: worked selling shoes for a day, candy striper for one semester senior year in high school (with pictures to prove it), grocery store check-out girl at 16, pizza waitress for 4 hours and 15 minutes in college, waited tables for one lunch hour shift after college, changes the oil every 3,000 miles and in 2009 learned to "copy and paste" on a laptop.

I have six days until the next wedding announcements are released    and my self worth tested once again.  That's not enough time to get to the base camp of Mt. Everest .