Denim Jumpers, Tote Bags and Here Comes the Bride

It’s Womens Conference here on campus. Every year during the week after April Graduation, thousands of women descend on campus to attend workshops and classes designed to edify, uplift, enrich and educate Mormon women. I suppose it’s a good thing. It would be a good thing if I were just a Mormon woman…because I would probably enjoy attending. But I am a Mormon woman who works on campus. And as such I don’t enjoy Womens Conference…at all.

These are good women – they really are. But for some of them, this is likely the first time all year they’ve been allowed away from home (with a car) without husbands and/or children. Imagine thousands of kids who’ve just gotten out of school for the summer…and then turned loose at Disneyland.

Same exact thing.

They are all in a super-hyper holiday mood and for some reason do not recognize little things…such as traffic lights…or rules of the road…or parking signs. You take your life in your hands just driving to work. Going from one end of campus to the other (either on foot or in a motor vehicle) is just evidence of an obdurate and determined Death Wish on your part.

I don’t even leave the building to go to lunch for two days. Because it’s a jungle out there…an estrogen-charged jungle.

My department assists in housing a good percentage of these conference attendees on campus. We get lots of strange requests and questions anyway, but this year a lot of the questions revolved around the availability and/or proximity of televisions.

Most of the time these women are too busy to watch TV. There are humanitarian projects set up that attendees can assist in. There’s an “instant choir” that attendees can participate in. There are author and artist book signings. And then there’s just plain old Girls’ Night Out (or in, actually) where you spend time with friends.

But television is very important this year…because there’s a wedding going on. A big wedding. A royal wedding. (In fact, it’s already happened…but a lot of these women were planning to watch coverage…which started about 3:00 a.m. this morning).


 THREE

A.M.

IN THE MORNING


Now I confess that thirty years ago I got up in the middle of the night to watch Charles and Diana tie the knot. But I was in my twenties and was used to carousing until the wee hours and still managing to get to work on time. I’m almost sixty now…I get sleepy at 10:00. Lately I can’t even manage more than five pages in the book I’m reading before I find myself reading the same paragraph four or five times and retaining none of it.

So more power to those ladies who set their alarms and glued themselves to the telly to watch Kate and Wills march down the aisle in Westminster, and who still made it to all the classes they’d registered for today. I managed to see the vids with a clear head and a good night’s sleep…only seven or eight hours later. (And complete and utter dishrag that I am, I got all moist and teary during the vows. Can’t help it, I’m a total romantic. Fairy tale. Handsome prince. The whole nine yards.)

Good luck to Kate and William.

And to all those bleary-eyed, dozey and knackered conference ladies: YOU GO, GIRLS!
 

 
For now,
Nedra