The Wedding Stinger

Saturday night I attended a wedding dance. The happy couple were a pair of former students of mine. I'm usually fairly uncomfortable in social situations like this, as I'm not the most social of people. I live alone, and tend to spend a fair amount of my "free time" alone. I like it that way. I can do what I want, no one bothers me. Generally, being in a large gathering of people, I'm not at my best. Ocassions such as this tend to remind me in uncomfortable ways of my status as a "loner." There were lots of families there, lots of couples there, lots of friends there...and me. Not to say that I didn't have a good time; actually, I did. I'm very happy for the newlyweds, cute kids who I've never known not to be a couple. I saw probably a dozen to twenty former students, most of whom I had a chance to talk with briefly. I had a really good long talk with a student who just graduated last year; I went over just to say hi to her before I was going to leave and ended up talking with her for fifteen minutes or so. All in all, I had a good night. (I was there for about two hours.) It's just that situations like that tend to make me uncomfortable going in. Plus, of course, I don't dance. Last night, I had a good excuse, as I hurt my back the night before, which made quick movements somewhat painful. Although one of my former students did drag me out onto the dance floor for about the last half or last third of one song.