Thank you, MOM AND DAD, for missing the reception, because your toy poodle, Muffy, had the sniffles.

Thank you, GRANDMA, for the pink fly swatter (with attendant squished fly).

Thank you, NAOMI, for the gilt-framed oil painting you did of your ex-boyfriend, Chad.

Thank you, GNOME, for being stoned when you arrived, and for setting up your ornate Egyptian water pipe—in front of my eighty-five-year-old, demented grandmother. We’d actually invited you to a wedding reception not a hookah lounge—but no worries! Grandma really enjoyed the contact high.  

Thank you, JOSH (FRIEND OF GNOME), for the black rubber gas mask bongs (with adjustable straps and decidedly phallic acrylic tubes). At first, everyone was a little mystified, unsure whether to wear them around the waist or on the head—until your demonstration. Being strictly, “non-bong people,” as it were, Zach and I have yet to test them. Fearful that once strapped onto such a device, with no escape route from the hit, we’d end up in some Harold & Kumar stoner universe, like where you and Gnome live.  

Thanks again, NAOMI, for the SOMEWHAT LARGE, gilt-framed oil painting you did of your ex-boyfriend, Chad.

Thank you, KIESHA, for the gift basket of organic “white widow” brownies. Despite their bitter aftertaste, everyone seemed to enjoy them. Especially Grandma. In addition, thanks for the catnip kitty treats, for our little cat, PRUNELLA. So she could get high like everyone else! 

Thank you, PRUNELLA THE CAT, for rolling around unashamedly, in a state of drugged-out bliss, with your tongue hanging out.   

Thank you, RAINBOW, for the “Fireball Surprise” chocolate truffles, tastefully presented in a tiny heart box. What were those crunchy things? Crickets? That they sent Zach and me fighting over the bathroom, unsure whether to first unleash our bowels, or do so while extracting long-limbed members of the Gryllidae family, from our respective throats, had to be your intent. What clever skullduggery! Three ex-husbands under your belt, it was quite obviously a metaphor for marriage.

Thank you, JUDY AND JONATHAN, for the pair of horned helmets. For then removing your clothes, placing said horned helmets on your heads, and performing a somewhat totemic (Viking?) sex act on our living room carpet. An enactment, I daresay, of what could have been our wedding night had we not eaten Rainbow’s truffles. Admittedly, some of the guests left in disgust—those party poopers! Possibly mistaking Jonathan for some giant horned housefly, Grandma began paddling his backside with her wedding gift to us—The Pink Fly Swatter.

But most of all, Thank you, AGAIN, NAOMI, for the GIGANTIC—barely able to fit through our front door—SLASHED, gilt-framed oil painting you did of your EX-BOYFRIEND, Chad! ON A HORSE. It was a truly REMARKABLE and MONUMENTAL painting, reminiscent of Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David. Only with a cutting-edge, contemporary sensibility, of destroying to create. What did you use in your attack—a meat cleaver? Had we fourteen-foot ceilings, and had Grandma, after “The Pink Fly Swatter Incident,” not further vandalized it with a Sharpie, by drawing an enormous cartoon penis on Chad’s nose, it would have had pride of place above our sofa. Still, no wonder you dumped Chad. Anyone riding a rearing horse, naked, while balancing a hissing opossum on their head has to be nuts!