Mash Up

16 years ago, when we weren’t pranking the Latin students or Mr. Walker's algebra class; when we weren’t reciting speeches for Mr. Altman on stage, writing papers for Dr. Free, or escaping to Egypt via Dr. Bedell; when we weren’t protecting our belongings from the class kleptomaniac, cleaning the clay out of our nails, or alerting Dr. Vassar that she had the in case of emergency number wrong (with all due respect, I believe it’s 9-1-1 not 9-9-1); you could probably find Nicole and I on a school heater, warming our kilted bottoms from the cold winter weather and tearing out a clean sheet of paper to craft yet another MASH grid.

For those that are unfamiliar, MASH is a girly, horoscope game. The respondent get three inputs for each category ranging from the name of your spouse to the place you will live to the number of children you will rear. The questioner and person filling out your MASH card gets the fourth input. After you've filled in all of your answers, a rudimentary algorithm determines which choices will define your future.

I don't know if it was version 521 or 630, whether it was freshman or junior year, but there was one MASH game that was pretty accurate in predicting Nicole's future.

She went to CMU.
She became a doctor.
She lived in an apartment in Boston.
She got married in Pittsburgh - Heinz Chapel to be exact; honeymooned in Africa.
She wore a white dress.
His tux was black.
The cake was a couple layers of burnt almond torte.
Nailed it.

Well almost. The only problem is that our little oracle indicated that Nicole would be marrying one of the four known boys within Ellis' deserted dating pool. Woof.

The default, worse case scenario guy circled on your MASH sheet was always depressing and clouded an otherwise rosy future; so we came up with another way to define the man who would be waiting for us at the end of the aisle.

A list, compiled of the ideal qualities we sought in our Prince Charmings. He was nameless in high school, but as we left Ellis’ bubble and ventured into a scarier co-ed world, our compasses led us to some other choices in the game of MASH.

Nicole's list was tough though. She didn't just have the standard attributes like good looking, funny and nice. She took Prince Charming's qualifications to the next level.

(Very) smart.
Great sense of style.
Comes from a good family.
Can dance. And preferably tango.
Loves to travel. Globally.
Good cook.
Likes to entertain.
Speaks Spanish. Or will learn.
Cultured.
Appreciates art.
Good luck with that.

It took a couple mismatches and some reordering of attributes, but Nicole found her first choice in the game of MASH and married him yesterday with multinational, cultural gusto and grace.

While we were never going to be able to perfectly predict all that our futures will hold – the house might actually be a mansion, the pink car might actually be blue, and the two kids might turn to three - but I feel confident predicting that Nicole and Alec have a happily ever after in their cards. And yesterday I felt so honored to be standing up for my dear friend as she said, ‘I do’ to her dream come true.

Lo.