Arman

I don't remember how old I was. Maybe something like ten years old when this happened.

First, some background.

I grew up in a very niche little culture of mostly German women who married American soldiers and retired from the Army in Columbus, Georgia. So my friends tended to be German-American kids with retired military fathers.

I also had friends who were Black or part Cherokee or Korean. I'm not saying I only associated with German-American Military brats, but they tended to be closer to my family.

Arman's parents were both German immigrants. His dad was not military. They were basically weirdos in my eyes.

I think it was his older sister who had one of the bigger weddings I've attended and then filed for divorce eighteen months later before Daddy paid off what the wedding cost him. 

That wedding was one of the most empty social experiences I have ever had. It was pointless.

I barely knew her. I was really friends with her younger brother and calling him a friend at that point is a stretch, but she was basically a casual acquaintance and I'm basically invited to her wedding because my parents KNOW her parents.

I wouldn't really call them friends with each other either. And so I am at this wedding, but I'm not really friends with anyone there and didn't really have anyone to talk to or whatever. I mostly don't know the people at this wedding.

If you are someone like Justin Trudeau and you want to remarry and invite your 300 closest friends to the wedding -- and I say that jokingly because no one HAS 300 actual FRIENDS -- well, that makes sense to me. 

When I answered a wedding question on Metafilter, I posted citations saying "People who have big weddings tend to have happier marriages." because I am personally anti wedding and this wedding is part of WHY.

If you want to spend $10,000 on me, "dad" or whomever, to get my marriage off to a good start, please do that as a down payment on a house. Don't blow it on a one day social event when I don't actually have dozens of friends I want to share this joyous occasion with.

So I think, you know, data showing correlation NOT causation between big weddings and SUPPOSED marital success or happiness, IF those aren't pure junk studies, that's got cause and effect backwards.

If you HAVE a robust social life and genuinely want to share this occasion with all your friends, maybe you just are socially savvy and generally know how to do the relationship thing.

But I wasn't close to the bride, didn't know the groom at all and I was like "I don't even know why I'm here." And then they get divorced a year and a half later.

If you don't have a compelling reason to formally introduce me to your 300 "closest friends" via a wedding saying "This is the new Mrs." and also sufficient money where I'm not slapping you on the back of the head in my mind while literally screaming in your face "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU????? Ten thousand dollars is like a down payment on a HOUSE!", I don't want to hear about how YOU want to PISS AWAY MONEY on a stupid party. 

I don't care if you do call it a wedding. It's a dumb party. I can get married AT THE COURTHOUSE for a lot less money and we are just as legally wed.

And you can largely thank Arman's idiot older sister for THAT attitude. And probably Arman to some degree, too.

Because when I was like ten or whatever, I guess my older brother outgrew playing with toys and gave me his. So I added his GI Joe toys to my boxes of Barbie Dolls and for a little while had tons of toys to play with.

And STACKS of cardboard boxes with lids in my closet where keeping everything organized and shutting my closet door was a giant CHORE.

Think Calvin and Hobbs style trying to shut the closet door drama. And I'm a kid who used to clean up my bedroom by shoving everything under the bed and Mom would come in and that was a NO from her. Try again, lazy.

I don't have room in my closet for CLOTHES and I have CLOTHES. My mom liked dressing me up and I always had a ton of clothes.

So I liked Arman -- I don't mean romantically. I just thought he was nice. We were children, not hormonal as hell adolescents.

And one day I was like "Do you want my GI Joe toys?" and he said yes and my mom maybe asked me "Are you sure?" but my mom was big on letting her kids make their own decisions. So she questioned it but didn't tell me "I cannot allow that."

To be clear, this is basically the only BOY I'm really friends with. I mostly had girl friends because I'm a GIRL.

So I gave my brother's old boy toys to the only boy I felt I could reasonably call a friend. Largely because he's:

1. A friend.

2. And a boy. 

So I give him multiple boxes of GI Joe toys and I'm imagining he will be grateful and we will be better friends. And then he NEVER PLAYED with me again. That was basically the END of that friendship.

Now you need to understand that I didn't spend my time going "I MISS my GI Joe toys!!!!! Waaaah!!!! I messed up!!!! I wanted to visit them at HIS house and have a built in playmate for playing with GI Joe toys!!!!" 

I didn't feel like getting rid of the toys and reclaiming my closet space was a TRAGIC mistake. But, dude, someone is generous to you and you GHOST them?????? What the hell????

My brother, for whatever damn reason, didn't WANT his toys anymore and made it MY problem to find storage space for them. It's not like this represented five years of my life and COUNTLESS allowance dollars of mine lovingly collecting all my favorite GI Joe toys.

I wasn't expecting him to grovel or something like that. I wasn't expecting him to be eternally grateful and kowtow to me.

But I'm NICE to you and you NEVER speak to me again?????

I mean for me it was an easy solution to getting my closet space back, but I did it in part because I thought it would help cement the friendship. Because if I thought he would be an ass about it, I maybe would have looked for some other solution to my closet space problem, like ask my mom to have a yard sale so I can turn it into money or something.

I basically got burned. It wasn't a sick burn where I cried myself to sleep about my long lost toys, but I had a BUNCH of toys in good condition and I was kind of like "I have too many gal pals and I would like more guy pals." And then fuck me and the horse I rode in on.

If I thought that would do nothing FOR ME and cost me a friend, I would have looked for some other way to dispose of those toys that did something FOR ME. Because it was a LOT of toys in good condition, so it had substantial value.

On the upside, I got that lesson early that people are dicks and have no sense and you should only give to them what you feel you can painlessly spare and won't cry over no longer having. Because, no, you cannot count on that in any way coming back to you.