Defender of the Free Refill

Over the weekend, I attended/participated the wedding of my friends Don Bell and Melissa Martinez down in sooouth Texas. As we speak, they are still in the air on their way to their honeymoon destination New Zealand, where they will make wisecracks about the Lord O The Rings movies, and be met with wisecracks about giants and elves in reply.*

I come away from this experience with a collection of groomsman gear generously denoted “keepers” by the tux rental people — including a top hat, gloves, spats (yes, you read that correctly) and cane. I rarely wear tuxes in my day to day routine, but the amenities will certainly come in handy in my pimpin’.

But more importantly, I come away with a host of unusual stories, gleaned from all the friends I visited with and have not seen (in some cases) for years. For instance, Matt Shaw, Man of the People, has inexplicably added to his reportoire the ability to make unlikely things Just Happen. By talking to the desk, for example, he got our shared hotel room bumped up to a suite at no extra charge, despite the hotel being booked solid.

Even less likely was the series of events now known as The Simpsons Incident. It works like this: I decided that, rather than some impersonal item from the official registry, I needed to give Don and Mel the now out-of-print Simpsons Monopoly game. Since it is only available through back channels, it took some searching; eventually I decided I had to purchase one via eBay. As the wedding drew near, I found two up for auction: one in the metroplex and one in Denver. Since Matt Shaw lives in Golden, he agreed to retrieve it and bring it to me in Harlingen if I won it.

Naturally, I did win the one in Denver. Picking it up was problematic: coordinating schedules with the seller, assuring the seller that the stranger who wanted her address (and was not the buyer) was legitimate, and finding a way to get there around work and packing for a trip to Texas are not small tasks.

Finally it came down to do-or-die time; Matt sent the seller an email saying he would have to pick it up Thursday morning before his 10 AM flight. He drove to the address in Denver, and as he got out a car pulled up to the driveway. Matt asked for the seller by name, and was told “oh yes, this is her right here in the car, we just came back to the house for her wallet.”

The game is retrieved, and after Matt flies it down to Texas, he finds waiting for him an email from the seller (sent after he left for her house that morning) regretting that she has to be gone all day and will have to arrange another time for the handoff. For anyone else, a missed opportunity, for MSMOTP, it all falls into place, like clockwork.

There was far more worthy of telling, of course. We went to South Padre on Saturday morning. I talked Hilary into stopping at a highway fruit stand on the highway on the drive home Sunday. There are giant pink gorillas denoting gas stations in certain parts of Texas. The pizza guy at the bachelor party went to the wrong hotel multiple times. Fingerless gloves were smuggled. More people crashed the reception than attended the ceremony.

But there’s time for that kind of talk later.

* That would make sense to you if you had seen Don and Melissa standing together.

Dateline Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 9:07 pm | File under Nate You can comment, or trackback from your own site.