Since I wrote about how I constantly embarrass my wife, I have been bombarded with remembrances:
Hey! Remember when you were punished and forced to sit in the corner by yourself because you accidentally laughed in that male nurse’s face because he had a lazy eye and thus was an obscenely close-talker at that housewarming party?
Hey! Remember when you screamed “Oh my God, what happened to you?” when your wife’s step-mother opened her front door and her hair was completely white because she had stopped dyeing it?
Hey! Remember when you laughed in that guy’s face in the men’s room at the wedding of your wife’s co-worker because he had chafing so bad from dancing that he had to have his wife bring Gold Bond powder into the men’s room? He may have had Moves like Jagger, but go easy there Buddy – you’re not on Soul Train!
I didn’t realize that a short little baby post would lead the charge down memory lane, but so be it. Apparently, word on the street in our house is that I’ve turned into the crazy relative at the family gatherings that silently farts like a saboteur and doesn’t acknowledge it when he’s on your team for Cranium…I’m not saying that it would have been OK if he weren’t on my team, but come on. Is that the flatulent equivalent of a tree falling in the woods and it stinks, but you don’t know if it really happened because no one will acknowledge it?
That being said, the groom is 6’ 4” and was marrying a 4’ 10” psycho with flaming red hair and I could just tell that their wedding was going to be a doozy. During her last wedding performance, Homegirl got so wasted on whiskey sours that she almost took out the bride making her entrance on the staircase and then a table full of food when she tried to sit down. I will take a little bit of responsibility for forcing the whiskey sours down her throat until she became socially bearable, but she only talks to animals and my wife ditched me so I didn’t have a lot to work with besides alcohol. You can just imagine how high my expectations were for her trip down the aisle and the fiasco that would ensue.
As a general rule, I don’t like weddings. The food is always terrible or there’s drama with a wayward flower girl that makes me douse her with a pitcher of water but, most of all, I hate to dance unless I’m really really wasted. Everyone always thinks that their wedding will be different somehow and that it’ll be the best one anybody’s ever attended…Blah blah blah – they’re always the same.
It should be fairly obvious and go without saying that I was a little bummed out that the ceremony went off without any craziness and then started drinking very heavily to make it through the rest of the day. I wasn’t disappointed that it went well, but I just knew when I scanned that crowd and saw 76% of them were senior citizens – to bide my time because this was definitely about to get more interesting.
Fast forward to the Bride and Groom cutting the cake so that they could feed it to each other. To my disappointment, he didn’t push the cake into his new bride’s face so I leaned over to the teenage boy sitting next to me and said “Pussy.” When I said that, I was commenting on the groom not covering his bride with icing from the cake, not realizing that he would then shout out “PUSSY.” Guess who got blamed? Not the young echo sitting next to me that called out the groom for being a wuss at his own wedding, but poor, innocent me who was simply commenting on the state of affairs in that catering hall. Apparently, the “adults” at the table thought I should have known better – but knew what? That he was a freaking parrot and would shout that out? It was really funny though…
I did my best to get that Bride drunk on whiskey sours again, but sometimes your best isn’t good enough and she wasn’t wasted so I gave up on her when she refused to do the worm. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned peer-pressure? If someone yells at you “Do the worm!” you do the worm. It’s just plain rude not to honor a request whether it’s your wedding or not.
That blue-haired crowd wasn’t about to leave any of their seats even if that place spontaneously erupted in flames, so I was left with no choice but to take over the dance floor. Like I said before, I am not a dancer unless I’m completely wasted, but I was a dancing machine at that wedding so you can just imagine the condition I was in. The last thing you wanna do is to get me started with a bunch of Golden Girls – those are my peeps right there! I am not trying to brag, but the majority of the population does not find me attractive, but senior women, with glaucoma especially, find me irresistible.
We started a conga line that the DJ had to actually play twice in a row because it took so long for some of the blue haired ladies to get up out of their seats with their walkers and canes. I was prancing around and grabbing them while screaming out “Come on you little Minx – let’s break a hip!” Like a young Baryshnikov, I was bopping around like Peter Pan and when that DJ played “the rhythm is gonna get you” – he meant it. I got more digits and emails at that wedding than I ever have before or since. Forget the Cougars – their older sisters are like “Super Cougars” and need love too…
There was also a short moment during the reception when I tried to get the Maître D to dance with my mother-in-law…I guess I probably shouldn’t have pretended that she was a recent widow to make him feel bad, but he did seem really nice and she does love to dance. I guess not everyone thinks it’s funny when you try to pimp out their mother to the help, but I always find that to be such a gray area…
Like the helper that I am, I tried to make the best of what could have been a bad situation for everyone and I thought I was “helping out” like a crowd motivator at a Bar Mitzvah, but some others felt that wasn’t the case. Apparently, there are social cues I missed out on and I’m the crazy one here…I guess you live and learn for the next family function. Thoughts? Whose side are you on?