She was going to be having breakfast with her mother and the christening was in the afternoon, so I said I’d meet her there and she asked me to pick up something appropriate on the way. The something was a bottle of champagne I grabbed that morning as I figured no ship christening is complete without whacking the front of the boat with a glass bottle even though champagne broke off the front of Ted Knight’s boat in the ‘you scratched my anchor scene’ of Caddyshack and if they didn’t use my bottle for the boat, we could drink it afterward and there’s nothing like drunk sailing with a bunch of rich white people just as long as Ted Kennedy isn’t driving.
When I arrived in Uppermiddleclassallwhiteontheshoremyhouseisbiggerthanyours, Connecticut, I didn’t see a dock or a boat or anyone standing on the shore. I was directed to the second floor and I was thinking how the hell did they get the boat up a flight of stairs?
On the second floor, there was no boat or boat dock or anyone resembling Gopher from The Love Boat. What is did see was a whole bunch of people not wearing docksiders and dressed a whole lot better than me. They were gathered around what a appeared to be small baby boy wearing a newbornsized wedding dress and I figured it had to be awfully presumptuous of the parents as it would be too early to tell if he’d even want to be Liberace.
My girlfriend was nowhere is sight and I figured I was already underdressed for the occasion, so an icebreaker would be in order. Just an FYI: I’ve typically been the ‘say precisely the wrong the thing and the exactly the wrong moment’ guy, and this christening was no exception.
“I brought champagne so let’s get this christening started. Where is the little dingy so I can give her a good whack” and I swung like Babe Ruth after calling his shot.
The next few moments were a blurr and in my defense, my girlfriend never said it was a baby or even that her cousin was pregnant so I guess I just assumed which as both Felix Unger and Benny Hill taught us, is never a good thing. This was her family and our wedding is next year and I assume, hopefully correctly this time, that they would have gotten over the whole darn incident by then.
For now, I’m sleeping on the couch which is, by the way, more comfortable than our bed. I know my mouth and how often it gets me into trouble so I wasn’t going to assume with couch comfort which is why I went along on that shopping trip. Although we haven’t thought about the menu for the wedding, I’m not sure if we’ll be toasting with champagne. I guess I’ll drive off that bridge when I come to it.
