You'll have to excuse me: I'm not at my best

[WARNING: This is a terrible video. Press the "play" button so you can hear the music, but don't even bother trying to watch the video. Canadian music videos from the early '90s were just about as terrible as American videos from the early '80s. This particular song takes about 30 seconds to get going.]

We got married in 1998, in Bangor, Maine. It was a small ceremony with my family and extended family. Steve's parents and brothers drove there from Newfoundland.

Steve's brother Sean was quite disturbed to learn that there was NO CANADIAN MUSIC for sale anywhere in Bangor. No Great Big Sea. No Spirit of the West. No Barenaked Ladies. What to do, what to do? How could you hold a wedding without jigging?

He came back from the music store with a CD called Irish Drinking Songs. I don't think any of us had ever heard any of these songs before, but they were as close to Newfoundland music as we were going to get in New England.

The next day, I went back to the church to make sure everything was OK, and discovered that the CD had been left behind. A church lady, much like this one:


greeted me with a hissed "I think this is YOURS" and pressed it into my hand. She clearly wanted to make sure everyone knew that
1) it was NOT hers;
2) because of my degenerate lifestyle, she had shrewdly figured out that it was probably mine; and
3) she was NOT impressed that she had ever been unfortunate enough to lay eyes on it.

As a good Canadian, I'm sure I dutifully apologized.