me, exaggerate?

Had Papa John's and "7th Heaven" with the DQs and my CRNA friend last night - also spent a few feverish minutes with last weekend's Style section of the NYT, a pad of scratch paper, and a calculator. DQ asked what I was doing.

"Being neurotic," her mother answered for me.

Out of my chicken scratch I concluded that of the ten brides profiled last weekend, the average age was 35 - but that was with an outlier of 72. (Second marriage. Passionate, intelligent ex-politician - former governor of Vermont, federal deputy secretary of education, ambassador to Switzerland.) All brides had at least one college degree, and one had 2.5 (bachelor's, masters, and JD in-progress). Youngest (26) was the third-year law student; second-oldest (41) an investment rep at Morgan Stanley. Also profiled were an RN (30), a corporate bankruptcy specialist (34), a Legal Aid attorney (38), a sports and entertainment events director (27), law associate (26), and a "corporate responsibility department manager" with Time Warner.

No, no, no - I was simply curious. Neurotic would have been creating a graph to uncover correlations between husbands' parents' high-society and/or mafia connections and brides' ages. And then possibly booking a flight to New York, where apparently if you're marrying Tony Soprano or have (or are working on) a law degree it's cool to be a 41-year-old first-time bride. Sweet!