Dorks in a Dart

My son was looking through our wedding album when he pointed out that a certain youthful groomsman looked, quote, like a dork.

"It was 1982," I said. "Everyone looked like a dork."

I had hunted down the album to scan a photo for our Christmas letter, which would reach our family members' hands while we were in San Diego celebrating our 30th anniversary. That old ivory album includes many lovely photos, from formal portraits with the two of us flanked by attendants to a candid shot of a discreet kiss, but I knew immediately which photo I wanted: the last one in the book, with the two of us peering out the window of our  1970 Dodge Dart. (Anyone who would marry a man who drives a car that color would have to be hopelessly in love.) 

It's not a particularly good picture. It's dark and poorly composed, with odd elements visible in the background (What's that scribbled on the glass? Is that my father standing back there?)--and look at the annoying reflections in my glasses! 

Those big glasses. Remember those great big dork glasses we all wore in 1982? They don't appear in any other wedding photos because I wasn't wearing them. Yes: I was vain enough to leave my glasses off and fumble blindly through my own wedding.
 
But when I think about that wedding, this is the photo that comes back to me. We were always going somewhere in some barely-functional beater, so it seems appropriate that we started this 30-year journey not in a limo but in a battered Dart, which was, in essence, a dork car.

In San Diego last month we enjoyed cruising along the sunny shore in a Mustang convertible with the top down, but no one would have mistaken us for cool people. In my heart of hearts I'm still wearing my dork glasses in that dork Dart with my dork sweetie, getting ready to conquer the world in our own dorkish way. It's been working for 30 years, so why not 30 more?