The grounder

I should stick to dancing at weddings. THAT'S WHAT I DO (and do it well, I might add). And sometimes, maybe I can venture out and be the wedding singer, but that's it.

Note to self: Do not put yourself anywhere inside the range of a bride and her bouquet, even if it is a joke.

The whole family is in town for the wedding of a family friend and tonight at the reception, I assumed my typical position on the dance floor. All was going well and then it came time for the bouquet toss. Groan. Typically, I find any reason I can to avoid this tradition. In fact, pretty much the one thing you can do to ensure I'm off the dance floor is to call for all the single ladies to get out there. Groan, again. As if we all needed to be reminded of the fact that we do not know the absolute joy of wedded bliss and then need to have an object hurled at us because scrambling for it might just be our ticket right out of singledom and into said bliss.

However, tonight at the last minute I decided that I'd abandon my bouquet-tossing-party-pooping ways, and I'd get out there and grab those flowers. I think I even told my brother and sister-in-law that I'd throw a couple of elbows to get it (actually, I know exactly what I said, but I'm not going to repeat it here). And as I got out there, ready for the rumble, I looked around and had a change of heart. The only people I knew at this wedding were the groom and my family. I had only met the bride minutes before this, so I felt kind of guilty about stealing the bouquet from some of her more deserving, eager, and undoubtedly way-closer-to-actually-getting-married-than-I-am friends. So as she did her little pre-toss routine, I started to back farther out of the crowd. And when the emcee counted three, she let go and her beautiful flowers I thought I was in the clear, but then they bounced off some girl's head. And then they landed. On my feet.

I said something I'm not going to repeat here, and looked to the girl to my left, and then to the right, desperately hoping one of them would dive for my shoes. No? Really? So I bent down and picked it up. Serves me right for trying to make a joke out of tradition. Yep, I'm sticking to dancing from here on out.