Dr. Shitty Pants' Triumphant Debut

Final word count: 19,510.

Today was a hard day. Things were looking pretty bleak. Then Dr. Shitty Pants appeared and made my life worth living. Today's event involved making the guest list, in which at least on character from all of your novels is discussed, and picking out the invitations. On tap for tomorrow: putting all the invitations together. Luckily, James picked everything out, so it remains a mystery to Julie, who will have to address and mail out the invitations, hopefully with the help of Lily.

This event will lead Julie to create a wedding blog entitled "The Reluctant Bride", basically to allow her to bitch about weddings. Hilarity will ensue.

Sorry about all the long posts! This one is important to read to the end. The entire character started from a real life typo, in a real life wedding planning guide. Trust me, it's worth the wait!

But first, meet Dr. Shitty Pants:

As I was scanning the invitations, Kathleen Hill walked into the lunch room. Kathleen had been a teacher at St. Roberts for about 9 years. And she was an insufferable asshole. She loved to remind people every day that she had a Ph.D. in English literature, and had perfect grammar. But, as elementary schools have much more water cooler gossip than water cooler romance, I had heard a few things about her over the years. One of the stories caused us to call her Dr. Shitty Pants behind her back. For good reason. But that’s a story for another day, folks.

“Julie! I was just looking for you. Congratulations on the upcoming nuptials!” she exclaimed. “You are so lucky. I remember when I met James at the Christmas party last year. It looked like he had fallen asleep on the table. He lay perfectly still, his shirt open over his sculpted incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn’t sleep. The perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal.”

Fuck, why does she talk like she’s a goddamned thesaurus? And what did that even mean? I had a sneaking suspicion she was hitting on him, but was unsure because of her strange and inappropriate use of adjectives. I was beginning to think her Ph.D. was from Lakehead or something. That is to say, it was utterly useless. Every one knows that Lakehead hands out Ph.D’s like a hooker hands out tricks, meaning for the right price you can get whatever you want. And, according to an article I read, tricks come at a bargain price in today's economy.

I realized the silence had drawn out longer than is socially acceptable, and forced myself to speak. “Thanks so much. And I am a lucky girl!” I squealed and before I could control myself I had unleashed a lecherous wink, inexplicably.

She laughed, a little too hard, and sighed longingly afterwards, staring off into the distance. I could only imagine that she was seeing James’s “iridescent chest”. It was awkward. “Well, you lucky girl,” she started, laughing again, as if we had some kind of inside joke. We didn’t. She continued: “I remember when I was planning my wedding, and I thought the worst part was invitations. So I’ve compiled a list of tips to make the job as easy as possible. And I have only two pieces of advice. Well, really they are just the most relevant Steinbeck quotes I could think of.” Then she stammered “...er, of which I could think.”

“That’s so generous. Let’s hear them!” I said, knowing that the faster I let her say her piece, the faster she would get out of here. And knowing her, she looked up “Steinbeck quotes” on Google, and was about to say the first two she found. And she had probably spelled Steinbeck wrong.

“Tip number one is to remember to enjoy the journey. As Steinbeck always said ‘A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safe guards, policing, and cohersion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.’ Tip number two is about marriage itself. Steinbeck says that ‘A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.’”

“That was beautiful. Thank you so much!” I said, ushering her out. I made a mental note to check out my Google theory. I knew I would never follow her wedding and marriage advice. She had, in fact, planned a wedding recently, but she had been divorced after about two weeks. I heard that it had something to do with the Dr. Shitty Pants incident.

I grabbed her list and glanced at it. She changed fonts with every bullet, which was irritating. She used the word ‘whom’, correctly. And the bullets were pink hearts. None of the points were particularly interesting, except the sixth. It read ‘When ordering, proof read your order very carefully sveral times.’ I was flabbergasted. There were two clear possibilities. 1) This was the most ironic typo ever or 2) she thought that grammatical humour was the height of hilarity. I chose to go with door number one, it was just funnier that way.