The price of admission

I finally took that PATH train - the commuter rail between New York and New Jersey - for the first time, to get to a wedding. The rails snake through the guts of Ground Zero, and then out. New Jersey is ugly, ugly, ugly, and then it is wicked posh. The wedding was at the groom's house, in a suburb where each manse manditorily had to be built on an acreage big enough to accommodate two horses. Plaiiiiiinfieeeeeeld. The people my age all came from the same rich private school and spent the entire evening obnoxiously and disingenuously complaining about their alma mater. It is interesting being suddenly catapulted into someone else's extended family, grandma who everybody shouts at while she looks confused in her wheelchair, the lecherous uncle, the contents of the medicine cabinet in the downstairs washroom. That's me - social antropologist, wine cadger.