Ranking Groomsmen By How Terrible They Know the Groom to Be

One of the funny things about the groomsmen/groom relationship is that most of the time, at least one of the groomsmen has seen the worst thing the groom has ever done, and still stands up there and at least societally, implicitly, says, “Yep. This guy’s good to get married.”

It’s a pretty good system, if it works as designed. Theoretically, any groomsman who thought, “You know, this is a terrible idea,” would say so.

But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to rank how at-their-worst different categories of groomsmen have seen the groom.

5. The New Brother-in-Law

In the median situation, this guy probably only knows the groom at something close to his best. He knows vaguely of some of the worse aspects—his own annoyances, his sibling’s complaints, stories told at the bachelor party. But he hasn’t really seen the worst stuff up close. Which, in the median situation, might be a good thing.

4. The Work Friend

Friends from work, or post-college friends in general, don’t really see a guy do the worst things he’s capable of doing. This is because during this period of life, the guy has a job, and the guy needs to keep that job, and a lot of the guy’s interaction with this friend comes in the physical office, which is the worst place to behave terribly if one is trying to remain employed.

3. The Brothers

Should they be number one? No. And here’s why:

Brothers obviously do see their brother at close to his worst. But they also 1) are more attuned to little things that annoy *them* than things that are actually bad, and 2) likely share a lot of the same bad characteristics because of genetics and shared rearing, and therefore are both accustomed to them and ignorant to some of their badness. They see the bad stuff. But they don’t *see* it.

2. The Childhood/High School Friends

In childhood, even in high school, guys do awful things, but they do a higher number of embarrassing things, so that’s the focus here. Especially since some of the awful things are forgivable because they were done by a child.

1. The College Friends

Here’s the real test. While some of this is shared—the terrible things were done together, and no one can bleach that from the past now, bonding them together in shared terror of themselves—college provides enough opportunities to behave awfully with few enough consequences that odds are, the groom’s worst action was something undertaken without at least one of his groomsmen. And short of those who commit legitimate crimes against society, most of men’s worst actions are undertaken during the college years: Burning the neighbors’ furniture. Tricking a passerby into kicking a cinderblock. Getting on a church roof while drunk and high, peeing off of it into the snow in broad daylight, and yelling at people on the quad to watch them do it.

In other words, college friends have seen some shit. And while their own judgment isn’t flawless (or likely even merely good), making them stand there by the groom on the wedding day, condoning the bastard’s marriage with their presence, is a good idea for this reason.