Stick Your Toe In My Gene Pool

By Shaniqua Dramboui

Stick your toe in...an appropriate title for my first column.  That is, of course, what any sane person would do before diving into uncharted waters.  I, as my mother loves to point out, lose my sanity and plunge head long into things, only to get pneumonia or a scalding burn.  After nursing my wounds, I try to find the humor in the scars left by my impulsiveness. 

My wedding, for instance, was a lesson in Nazi torture techniques.  Looking back on it now though, I see the humor in pain.   It started with my "wan'na be rock star" boyfriend asking me to marry him with a twist tie fashioned to look like a ring.  Sweet and romantic at the time, but it should have clued me in on what was to come.  

I was pregnant and my father insisted that we get married before the "unplanned" arrival.  Now, weddings are tough enough on brides, but try it 4 months pregnant, with morning sickness and high heels.  I felt like an eggplant on stilts.  My parents were in the middle of a nasty divorce that made World War II look like a lovers spat.  They both brought separate dates.  My family members were taking ten to one odds on the anticipated mud wrestling match between my mom and my dad's twenty-eight  year old girlfriend.  It never happened,  but I think my mom would have taken her.  Needless to say, the tension was thick enough to cut with a chain saw.

 I knew I should have eloped when my father walked into the brides dressing room and said "Who is the guy in the white waiter's outfit?"   

"What does he look like?"  I said in horror, knowing who it was but not wanting to know.  

My father described a tall, skinny, stupid looking, (his words), guy  in a white suit with a purple shirt and black girl's boots, ( ya know, the ones with the buckles?),  and green and black tiger striped underwear that was visible through the pants.  Now you are probably asking why a pimp is at my wedding, but you would be mistaken. That was my husband's best friend, and best man.  

When I walked down the aisle I saw a large, ( and by large I mean "easier to step over than go around"), woman in a blue sequined evening gown....yes I said blue sequined evening gown......sobbing here eyes out.  Later, at the reception, she bypassed the entire line and came up to my husband and said, "Don't forget me 'kay?"  Later I found out that she was an old flame who thought by showing up she would make my husband go running back into her ham hock arms.  I'm just glad when she danced a hip didn't break loose and kill someone.

My father's family ate and left.  Their timing is impeccable.   My new husband, my mom and her date, myself,  and a few other loyal people, cleaned up after my own wedding. Thank God it was not an open bar or we would have been mopping up blood!

This is the story of my impulsive, ill planned, wedding.  The next time you feel the need to dive into something,  remember "waiter boy" and the blue sequined hippo nightmare of my headlong plunge--and stick your toe in instead.

 

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