Rocky Road Scholar: Runaway Bride

Julia Roberts has got nothing on fellow Georgia native Jennifer Wilbanks. The latter's version of The Runaway Bride is a real peach.

I'm not going to really recap much of the actual news story since that has been airing around the clock the last 72 hours. But one question keeps popping up. Why did she really do it?

I find it hard to believe she'd go through all that trouble just to say "I Don't." Why didn't she just start off by telling him, "It's not you, it's me." That's worked for thousands of other people.

Maybe her fiancé, who seems like a better egg than Clark Kent, did something "crazy" during his bachelor party like smoke a bubblegum cigar, go on a skeeball bender at Chuck E. Cheese or watch "stag" films on the Outdoors channel. Maybe he and his buddies went to watch a stripper get down to business taking the varnish off of some kitchen cabinets.

Maybe she bolted because she found out they were going to be married and weren't even cousins! That would be enough to derail a few weddings in the Deep South. Or maybe she wanted to elope but didn't know that meant you take your spouse-to-be with you.

I was going through excuse after possible excuse in my mind when I heard on the news today that Wilbanks' fiancé still wants to go through with the wedding. He forgives Wilbanks and says, "Isn't everyone allowed to make a mistake?" Well, there was more than one mistake here, including making this sappy fiancé a murder suspect in the time she was gone.

Maybe that's a clue. If he's not going to be pissed about this, he's not going to be pissed about anything. He's always prancing around like Mr. Rogers, happy to be in his cardigan and sneakers, chatting with the mailman Mr. McFeely, and watching his puppets and toy train go by. She just wants him to go off on her just once so she knows he's normal. But she tried everything, and nothing worked, so she had to go Greyhound.

Another thing that makes me wonder: Why do girls like Wilbanks and Audrey Seiler (that wacky broad from Wisconsin who hid in a swamp in Madison to get attention from her boyfriend last fall) go through all that trouble to get attention? It used to be a girl could wear a low cut blouse and a short skirt and get more attention than she could handle.

Now they fake their own abductions and disappear for days on end, creating mass man hunts by law enforcement agencies and peeling years off their loved ones' lives due to the stress of it all.

Wilbanks went out for a "jog" the day she disappeared. It was quite a run, undoubtedly inspired by a Forrest Gump marathon. She went from Georgia to Vegas and back to New Mexico before she stopped running. She called 911 from a 7-Eleven convenience store in Albuquerque - the same city where that kook dumped coffee in her own crotch and then sued McDonalds - but kept the charade going. After taking the last bite of her roller hot dogs and last swig from her Big Gulp, she told a terrifying tale of being abducted by a Mexican man and a white woman in a blue van. That implicated at least half the state's population.

A few hours later, she finally admitted she made the whole thing up because she was scared about her wedding day, which had a guest list of 600. No shit. You could tell from that "deer in the headlights" look in all the pictures with her fiancé that she wasn't ready to take the plunge. The last time I've seen eyes bug out like that was when I was fishing and reeled in a walleye too fast from 40 feet underwater.

True, that many guests for a party can be overwhelming. When I was in high school in Bismarck, N.D., 600 uninvited guests crashed my house to party when they found out my parents were in Hawai'i. Did I take the first bus out of town to Vegas? Hell no! But I did contemplate throwing myself under a bus a few days before they came back rather than face the wrath of Poppa Bear.

If I ever planned my own disappearance, there's no fucking way I'd go by bus. Georgia to Vegas would be a long haul by Greyhound. I'd peddle a tricycle all the way there before I'd get on the bus, Gus.

Why Vegas? Maybe she figured she wouldn't be charged with faking her own disappearance because she saw all those commericals that said "Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." Maybe her first choice in a husband was Wayne Newton and she wanted to give him one last crack at her before her big day. We may never know.

I think her motivation was bigger than Vegas, bigger than fear of a 600-guest wedding day. I think she did it to cash in. Think about it: America is a sucker for stupid shit, especially when it's on TV. Ask any shirtless trailer park idiot who has scrape marks on his beer belly from being gang tackled in a parking lot on COPS.

Maybe Wilbanks, who had a wedding shower the Saturday before her disappearance, felt slighted by the number of gifts that came in, specifically cash. Sure, they got a blender, a couple of toasters, some dish towels, an oven mitt and a bundt cake pan. But the cash haul was short for a 600-guest party coming up. She panicked, worrying she'd get more oven mitts and bundt cake pans at the gift opening after the big day, so she went to Plan B.

Plan B was hatched the week before when she bought a bus ticket to Vegas. If there was any chance the cash haul would not be big, she would fake her own abduction and then reap all of the benefits when she surfaced - endorsement and entertainment deals. Think about it, it makes sense.

First, companies that make running shoes will be tripping over each other to get her endorsement deal for the Runaway Bride shoe.

Next, why would she spend all that time on a bus between Georgia and Las Vegas? No other reason is as reasonable as she wanted the endorsement gig. The Greyound dog logo could be modified to leaving a wedding gown and bouquet in the dust. New slogan? "Want to ditch your fiancé? Go by bus! Leave the driving to us!"

Why did she cut her own hair during her "ordeal?" Not to disguise herself during the disappearance. She wanted an endorsement deal from Great Clips or Cost Cutters, some place that would encourage folks looking to "change their appearance" to come to them instead of doing it on their own. Even better, she could be the pitch-woman for the infomercials for the do-it-yourself hair cutting machine, the Flo-Bee.

Maybe her goal was her own Mastercard commercial. Round-trip bus ticket to Vegas: $89. Wedding party for 600 guests that gets "postponed": $60,000. The media circus created by faking your own abduction: Priceless.

Throwing a rainbow blanket over her head in recent public outings, she's hardly doing it to hide herself from shame. She's doing it hoping to land a deal with some bedding company. Think how popular Martha Stewart's poncho was after her release from that Club Med called "prison."