The Upside: 6-6-10
The Late Show, Part 1
It’s wedding season. This is not to be confused with hunting season, although both often involve terrified mammals feeling trapped.
I did once have to hunt down a wedding though. It wasn’t pretty.
The summer my university classmates Jennifer and Craig got married, they invited me and our friend Rachel to the big day. We’d all become good pals the year before at school. Rachel and I made arrangements to go together. The morning of the ceremony I drove from my parents’ cottage to her hometown, picked her up, and off we went to the city of Ottawa, where both Craig and Jen had been raised. It’s where I’d grown up too, and I recalled once driving past the church where the wedding was to be held. This was a good thing, because neither Rachel nor I remembered to bring along the little map enclosed with each invitation.
Upon reaching Ottawa, we made our way to Rachel’s aunt’s house. The plan was to have lunch there and change clothes for the wedding. Because we’d be strangers to most of the gathered guests, there was no point in arriving too early at the ceremony, and so we afforded ourselves twenty minutes to travel about a ten-minute drive. Rachel looked stunning in a gold dress and silk shawl. “Apart from the bride and groom,” I proclaimed, “you and I might be the most stylish couple there.”
“Your clip-on tie fell off.”
“Got any duct tape?”
Our destination was Bells Corners United Church. In my recollection, the church was on Moodie Drive. This was the major road bisecting the neighborhood of Bells Corners from north to south. Slowly we cruised the avenue, our eyes peeled. When we got to the north end of Moodie, we turned around and began looking again. “We must have missed it,” I said. “I’m sure the church is on this street.”
“Maybe we should stop and ask for directions,” suggested Rachel.
“Haha! Ask for directions!” We men always find it funny when women get silly like that.
By the time we (once again) reached the south end of Moodie, Rachel had become a little moody herself, if you ask me. “I thought you knew where this church was!” she said, an edge of panic in her voice. “The wedding starts in two minutes! Two minutes!” She leaned her face into mine and balled up my collar in her fist. “If I miss seeing Jennifer walk down the aisle, I’m going to die! And I’ll be taking you with me!!”
Freshly motivated, I pulled into a strip-mall parking lot and pointed to a row of stores. “Let me get direc—“ Before I could finish my sentence, Rachel had bolted from the car and was dashing awkwardly in her high heels across the pavement. I decided to stay in the car with the motor running.
Disappearing into a butcher shop, she emerged moments later, all four limbs flailing wildly as she tried to maintain her balance in a sprint, skittering back to the car like a crazed octopus in a gold dress. “Go up to those lights and turn right on Richmond Road! Hurry! Hurry!!”
At the intersection I careened around the corner on two wheels, veering the car onto Richmond. Within a block we could see the church, and there was Jennifer with her back to us, poised all in white at the outside entrance to the sanctuary, awaiting the signal any second to begin her procession.
“Aaaaaaaiiiiggghhh!” shrieked Rachel. “We’re going to miss seeing Jennifer go down the aisle!! Aaaaaaaiiiiggghhh!!”
“Hang on!” I said as I made several abrupt turns and shot into the parking lot around the back of the building. We leapt out of the car and Rachel began her seizure-like high-heeled gallop back toward the street entrance of the church. “Rachel, we can’t go barging past Jen! We need to slip in another way!”
Charging through a door from the parking lot, we found ourselves in the basement. We could hear the muffled strains of “Here Comes the Bride” emanating from the floor above us. “Aaaaaaaiiiiggghhh!” remarked Rachel helpfully.
The ceremony had begun. And things were about to get much worse.
To be concluded next week.
Peace, joy & laughter,
Cuyler