By Martin H. Levinson

A Typical Nobody Marries Noh-Won Important

A Typical Nobody and his high school sweetheart, Noh-Won Important, were married last night in the Holy Church of the Faceless Multitudes, which is located at the corner of Main and Wherever in Anytown, USA. A commonplace clergyman carried out the ceremony.

The bride, 22, is a throwback to an earlier era when girls just wanted to get married, have children, and care for their husbands. An alumna of the High School for the Conforming Arts, Noh-Won spent most of her time there studying quilting, needlepoint, and how there are worse things to do in life than raise children at home. After receiving her high-school degree she had been on the prowl for a man to settle down with. That undertaking has been successfully completed with her marriage to Mr. Nobody.

Mrs. Nobody is the daughter of Mike and Molly Mainstream. Her father works at a humdrum job on a boring street in an unexceptional part of town. Her mother is a housewife who enjoys watching TV soap operas, clipping newspaper coupons, and gabbing with her friends.

Mr. Nobody, 25, is a professional everyman who has occasionally been interviewed by reporters looking for opinions from the “man on the street.” He does not teach creative writing at Stanford, Iowa, Princeton, or Yale. In 2020 he was not awarded a fellowship from the NEA, a scholarship to the Yaddo Writers’ Colony, or a spot on the “20 under 40” New Yorker writer’s list. His poetry and short stories have never graced the pages of The Atlantic, Harper’s, Ploughshares, or the Paris Review and he believes they never will. Mr. Nobody works as a janitor at Lackluster Pines, a garden-apartment complex where in addition to his sweeping duties, he mows the lawn on the grounds and takes the garbage to the curb every Tuesday and Thursday.

The bridegroom is the son of two archetypal Americans who have never had an original thought or done anything of note in their lives. With conventional looks and simple tastes, they might be reasonably classified as eminently forgettable people.