Some things just aren't meant to be...

(Originally published as a Facebook Note in 2010.)

SETUP:

My former boss, Sheik, had been hounding me to find myself a girlfriend.

Sheik was thrilled that I'd be attending a wedding, as it's a great place to meet people (never mind that it was in St. Louis and I lived in Virginia Beach).

My boss, Jim, had recently started dating a wonderful woman whom we all joked he had met at a family reunion. To be fair, they're far from being blood relatives, but the trees definitely have some entangled branches. 

I sent the following email shortly after the reception:

Subject: Status Update: Romance at the Wedding

Sheik,

Since you have encouraged me to find a girlfriend at the latest family function I thought I would let you know about today's events.  This wedding was not one for the record books.  My best guess would be 30 people total.  Of that 30 only five of us were single.  To make matters worse the only other single attendee that was of legal age was one of my cousins.  While this would have stopped me in the past, Jim has taught me to get over such trivial things in matters of the heart.  Although everyone did a bit of table hopping (no, not dancing) I was able to chat up my cousin quite a bit.

Then came time to throw the bouquet.  This was a bit of a setup, where in my cousin turned around only to find what amounted to floral shotgun round being hurled directly between the eyes.  While this may have seemed like fate intervening to urge me along in my pursuit, by the end of the reception the champagne had worn off enough for me to realize that dating a first cousin still holds some social stigma.  Besides which he really wasn't my type.

-Justin

He'd actually turned a lovely shade of purple just after catching the bouquet. Poor fella.