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Now come get your crackers and wine

My boyfriend, SweetPea, and I went to a friend's wedding yesterday. This is just a friend of mine from work - one that I don�t know particularly well. I know that he's very funny, he's kind although he's angry most of the time, and I know he thinks our bosses are as dumb as I do. What I didn't know was that he was a Catholic Fanatic.

I think religious people should be required to identify themselves somehow, not with anything negative of course, but with something like jewelry or a t-shirt. All Catholics have to wear 2 earrings in the left ear, all Jews wear 2 in the right ear...

That way we can avoid the situation my boyfriend and I endured yesterday. If you've read up on me you know I'm not a big fan of religion, but I have been intimately involved with it in my life. I completely understand what people get from it, and I know why they find sanctity in their holy rituals. I get it, it's just not for me. SweetPea, on the other hand, was raised by non-practicing Jews whose religion was based more on Freud than Moses.

Their lack of beliefs is matched only by mine, and although they identify themselves as Jewish, they have bigger Christmas and Easter celebrations than I've ever seen in a Christian home. Last Christmas Eve we drove around New Jersey for hours looking at the decorated houses with families eating and laughing together in their living rooms. We sang songs about the little Lamb of Bethlehem as only we could, with thick, stereotypical Jewish accents, like a car full of confused but melodic Rabbi�s.

As we sat through this wedding, which started with me saying, "Look at all the gaudy gold up there, this must be a Catholic Church," my boyfriend�s eyes grew wider and wider with disbelief and genuine fear. He found the rituals and symbols and practices so foreign and strange, that I think he actually worried they were going to bring out a live chicken any minute. My entire family is Catholic, so I'd been through the standing-and-sitting-and-standing-and-kneeling-and-standing-and-sitting shenanigans before. He tried, but after 30 minutes he just sat there next to me, watching us jazzercise while he tried to catch his breath.

It was a beautiful wedding, and the couple looked happy and stunning together for the entire world to see, and it made me very melancholy. I know it was the type of wedding my family had wished for me, and I felt guilty that I�d never be able to give it to them. I guess they�ll have to settle, like they have so many times before, for something a little less conventional, and they�ll have to find pride and happiness as they watch SweetPea and I exchange our rings and vows and love and hope.

They may struggle, it wouldn�t be the first time. But when the time comes, I know they will be there with me, showing their love and support, because that�s just what Catholics do.