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A bit of fiction!
I rode my bike the short two miles over to Beldred yesterday. The fall leaves make for an exciting ride this time of year. The one lonely oak in Farmer Jackson's field is worth the ride. It is a great and mighty oak whose colors seems to become more and more vibrant every autumn. The only dark spot in this glorious display of natural color is the row of hand painted signs underneath protesting the county's resolution to pave the old country lane between Beldred and Paddington. I suppose Farmer Jackson feels a bit of fond affection for the antique route, but honestly, paving it would save all of us a great deal of money and time by cutting the trip from Paddington to Beldred down to one fourth of what it is today.
I was on my way to a wedding rehearsal. One of my former junior Sunday School boys is getting married to a girl over there and I have been asked to officiate the ceremony tonight. Frankly, I have never seen such chaos. Even Ms. Evansworth's ceremony in a canoe on the lake was more orderly than this. That is another story in and of itself! The pianist is a second year music student who, judging from his performance, still cannot read a single note of music. That would be fine if he at least knew how to crank out something by ear, but his apparent tone deafness is superseded only by his gross lack of social grace. Halfway through his pathetic rendition of Mendelssohn's Wedding March he gave the keys one final, angry blow with his open palms and stormed from the room muttering something about him being the who should be waiting for the bride at the altar. Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all?
Then there was the groom's mother. As she never attended our church, I never had the privilege of meeting this interesting specimen of a woman. She was square. I mean to say that she was about as wide and thick as she was tall. Or short, actually. Towering at an impressive four feet, this woman dominated the room. Seriously. Her prominence could not be attributed to her great size. It was her clothes. This mother-in-law-to-be was sporting a very stylish pair of incredibly tight stretch pants in a lovely shade of pea green. I shudder when that mental image appears in my consciousness. Billowing out above the stretch pants was a loose clinging, purple, silk pancho-style garment that somehow reminded me of a parachute. Under the parachute, this catwalk queen was wearing an orange t-shirt to cover the parts the billowy pancho missed. She was barefoot. Her limp, mybloggers hair was tangled up in a twisted pile of hot sticks that made one incredibly curious as to what the final product would look like. Her name was Edna and she was in the middle of a heated argument with the bride's mother over the placement of the candelabra when I walked into the church.
Adding to this already colorful and highly intense scene were the children. I stopped counting at twenty simply because I kept losing count. They were everywhere! Running up and down the aisle, crawling under pews, conducting dry baptisms in the baptistry, I wanted to snatch them up and give them all a sound spanking. Unfortunately, I was not in my church, nor were they my children. Evidently, the bride's family believes in having as many children "as the good Lord will give us", quipped one hefty mamma to my right.
An hour after my arrival, the mothers were still at each other's throats. The fathers had not even arrived and the bride was in tears sitting behind the altar, hugging her knees. I went into action. I told the mothers to stop shouting at each other because the candelabra was not going to be placed where either of them wanted it. The bride would decide. And that is that. I ran the children outside, locked the door and picked two teenage cousins of the groom to play the part of the missing fathers. Fortunately, I had packed a CD of wedding music in my backpack before leaving my house that afternoon. The sound man executed Mendelssohn's Wedding March beautifully.
We got through the practice and were straightening up for tonight when the fathers showed up. Fortunately, their part in this consists of little more than walking down the aisle and giving away the bride.
Did I mention the groom? He was pale green. Seriously. Something he ate at lunch made him very ill and we were only able to practice between his frequent trips to the restroom. The local pastor seemed worried he might toss his cookies on their recently installed new carpet. I suggested keeping a small trash can handy, just in case.
Honestly, I am very interested in seeing how all this plays out tonight. Based on the rehearsal, it should be quite entertaining!
Wow. You could write a novel from all of that.