Just the tip, just for a second

"Are we gonna get hopped up enough to make some bad decisions?" It dawns on me that millions of people make lousy decisions, some hopped up and some not so hopped, and those decisions affect millions and millions, some as yet unborn, some as yet unaware.



So? So I watch "Wedding Crashers" with the avid devotion that a Kennedy scholar pays to the "Berliner" speech footage. I make this promise: if you watch the first 9:04 of this Vince Vaughn - Owen Wilson classic, your troubles will roll away faster than Hockey Mama can drop the "g" from her gerunds, makin' her sound a lot like someone poppin' up in the cornfield on "Hee Haw."



My old firehouse buddy Johnny L. was the first wedding crasher I knew. Near us was a semi-swanky banquet-reception hall called Martin's Eudowood. Johnny, whose work schedule most weeks called for him not to work Monday through Friday, with weekends off (and he was his own boss!) used to slip into some khakis, a shirt and (clip-on) tie and sports jacket on Saturday afternoons, hang around the parking lot near Drug Fair ("Don't say 'drug store,' say 'Drug Fair!' There's a big difference!") and loiter near the entrance to Martin's, positioning himself for a rapid entry - a surge, if you will - right about the time that the snackage was over and the salads were being placed in front of the guests. By the time that the bride's Uncle Peter was reaching for the fake bleu cheese dressing, still smarting over being placed at table 10 with the distant kin from Bowie while big-shot Cousin Tom and his inbred brood were perched up near the band at table 2, Johnny slid into a vacant seat, introducing himself as a guy who worked with the groom, or as distant kin from outside Bowie, or as a boyhood neighbor of the groom who hadn't seen him since they "played Greek dodge together in 3rd grade!"



In the movie, the crashers researched their "roles" so they had acceptable backstories as to who they were, why they belonged there. But Johnny, armed only with the audacity of youth and a sort of preternatural hunger that was rarely sated by just one dinner per night, always went in there a nobody and came out a star. He would even go so far as to approach the groom and bride in the post-dinner, let's-get-dancin' phase of the festivities, making the recently betrothed peer quizzically as he recounted how they "met" at "work."



What really set Johnny apart from the rest of us, pretenders to his crown as King Of All Moochers, was that he would secret Ziploc® baggies within his sports jacket and somehow walk out with goodies à la carte. Testing the limits of his nerve, his stealthy ability with a serving spoon, and the renowned strength of the Ziploc® seal, Johnny would often show up back at the firehouse with a baggie full of seafood newburg. Other pockets would have slices of wedding cake, cheese cubes, lasagna, and bottles of imported beer.



There's always someone who doesn't show up for a wedding - couldn't get off work, kid has the croup, unexpected company from Amarillo shows up the night before - and let's hope there's always a Johnny to step up to the plate. And the dessert table, and the open bar.