Elvis, Doves, and an Owl Cake

The other day I was using Poll Everywhere with one of my classes.  We were putting up answers to a question, and since a great number of students had been called from class for a quick meeting with the counselor, I wasn't in any great hurry to move through them quickly and leave the rest of the students behind.

We lingered, and the students put up good answers, thoughtful answers to the questions.  I am still trying to remember how we got on the subject, but suddenly we were talking about what it would take for me to get married.  I have tried, but I can't figure out how we made that leap.  I'm sure it was there in the literature we were studying.  The actual steps between points A and B are just fuzzy now.

Anyway.

I think the students were a little shocked when I told them I didn't exactly have a lot of faith that would be happening for me now.  I shouldn't say things like that to them, I guess.  They are young and precious, and most of them still believe in the idea of everybody pairing up like animals heading into the Ark.  The simple truth, though, is that some of us are unicorns, Chimeras, phoenixes, and dragons, and we really didn't get on the boat in time....

After seeing their faces, I hastened to assure them that it was really reaching a point where it didn't bother me as much, that I was okay with it.  I told them that I was free to travel, free to move, free to do or not do whatever I wanted.  I told them that I wasn't easy to live with.  They weighed all this, and then they more or less dismissed it out of hand and started planning...no, that's not really the right word...plotting... my wedding for me.  It got funny really fast after I told them I have always had a secret dream (okay, not so secret....everybody who knows me has heard this) to get married in Vegas by an Elvis.  They found this acceptable as long as there were doves.  Apparently, there have to be doves.  The doves are key.  And a cake shaped like an owl.  Or a cake from which someone dressed as an owl leaps.  And Shakespeare.

It was so funny.  I could see it all so clearly in my mind.  The birds, the inevitable white cape with red satin lining on the bejeweled Elvis, the owl-shaped wedding cake, some guy in a doublet and ruff.  The hilarity of it.  And you know what?  If that's the closest I ever get to having it, that was a pretty good deal, actually.